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Enemy of Mankind

Should the U.S. Supreme Court be the court of the world? In the 18th century, two feuding Frenchmen inspired a one-sentence law that helped launch American human rights litigation into the 20th century. The Alien Tort Statute allowed a Paraguayan woman to find justice for a terrible crime committed in her homeland. But as America reached further and further out into the world, the court was forced to confront the contradictions in our country’s ideology: sympathy vs. sovereignty. Earlier this month, the Supreme Court heard arguments in Jesner v. Arab Bank, a case that could reshape the way America responds to human rights abuses abroad. Does the A.T.S. secure human rights or is it a dangerous overreach? Additional music for this episode by Nicolas Carter. Special thanks to William J. Aceves, William Baude, Diego Calles, Alana Casanova-Burgess, William Dodge, Susan Farbstein, Jeffery Fisher, Joanne Freeman, Julian Ku, Nicholas Rosenkranz, Susan Simpson, Emily Vinson, Benjamin Wittes and Jamison York. Ken Saro-Wiwa Jr., who appears in this episode, passed away in October 2016. Supreme Court archival audio comes from Oyez®, a free law project in collaboration with the Legal Information Institute at Cornell. Support Radiolab by becoming a member today at Radiolab.org/donate.    
Duration
59m
Broadcast on
10 Dec 2020
Audio Format
other

Should the U.S. Supreme Court be the court of the world? In the 18th century, two feuding Frenchmen inspired a one-sentence law that helped launch American human rights litigation into the 20th century. The Alien Tort Statute allowed a Paraguayan woman to find justice for a terrible crime committed in her homeland. But as America reached further and further out into the world, the court was forced to confront the contradictions in our country’s ideology: sympathy vs. sovereignty. Earlier this month, the Supreme Court heard arguments in Jesner v. Arab Bank, a case that could reshape the way America responds to human rights abuses abroad. Does the A.T.S. secure human rights or is it a dangerous overreach?

Additional music for this episode by Nicolas Carter.

Special thanks to William J. Aceves, William Baude, Diego Calles, Alana Casanova-Burgess, William Dodge, Susan Farbstein, Jeffery Fisher, Joanne Freeman, Julian Ku, Nicholas Rosenkranz, Susan Simpson, Emily Vinson, Benjamin Wittes and Jamison York. Ken Saro-Wiwa Jr., who appears in this episode, passed away in October 2016.

Supreme Court archival audio comes from Oyez®, a free law project in collaboration with the Legal Information Institute at Cornell.

Support Radiolab by becoming a member today at Radiolab.org/donate.    


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RIDILEB is supported by AT&T. We all love to connect via video calls or texts. Right now, at AT&T, you can get the new iPhone 18 Pro for $0 with iPhone trade-in. Any condition. It has the ultimate pro camera system and big leap in battery life, so you can turn this deal into a long-lasting connection. Learn how you can trade in your iPhone for the new iPhone 18 Pro requires trade-in of iPhone 14 or higher, excluding iPhone 16E, an eligible plan. Terms and restrictions apply, subject to change, visit an AT&T store for details. Okay, so, Supreme Court has a lot on their plate right now, and a lot of Supreme Court news is coming at us. Maybe one thing that you might have missed is that last week, the Supreme Court heard a case that asked kind of an interesting and weird question. Whether or not the American corporations, Nestle, USA, and Cargill are responsible for human rights violations overseas. The case was brought by six African men who alleged that they were child slaves on farms that supplied cocoa to these companies. Should Nestle and Cargill be responsible for that? So that was the question. And a couple of years ago on our spin-off series about the Supreme Court, more perfect, we actually reported on, well, there's a whole cluster of these cases that all poke at this question. Should US companies be responsible for human rights violations that happen in other places that are not the US? It's kind of a fascinating question with some fascinating wormholes attached. So today we're going to revisit that more perfect episode to shed some light on the case that the Supreme Court is, it could be deciding this term. The story comes from a more perfect season two, we're just going to drop right into it. In the United States, we give the Supreme Court the power to find justice for people. People who have been abused and manipulated. Horrible. I mean, they didn't knock on the door. That power extends beyond state borders, sometimes even beyond national borders. With, with, can I come and show you who I am? Question is how far do we want it to go? Should our Supreme Court be the Supreme Court of the world? The honor of all the cheap justice and the associate justices of the Supreme Court of the United States. Oh, yeah, oh, yeah, oh, yeah. All persons having business before the honor of all the Supreme Court of the United States and the Supreme Court of the United States and the Supreme Court of the United States Okay, so I grew up at a time when a lot of people genuinely saw America differently than they do now. This was the 70s and 80s, Carter, Reagan years, and there was a sense, particularly if you were a new arrival, that America was special, exceptional, that we held the world to a higher standard. Certainly, we brought my family to America. Okay, so it's not that way anymore so much and it seems like every day, at least in my lifetime, we're asking the question, how should we feel about that? Whatever that is, that higher calling that somehow, for better or worse, embedded in the

Transcription truncated.

Should the U.S. Supreme Court be the court of the world? In the 18th century, two feuding Frenchmen inspired a one-sentence law that helped launch American human rights litigation into the 20th century. The Alien Tort Statute allowed a Paraguayan woman to find justice for a terrible crime committed in her homeland. But as America reached further and further out into the world, the court was forced to confront the contradictions in our country’s ideology: sympathy vs. sovereignty. Earlier this month, the Supreme Court heard arguments in Jesner v. Arab Bank, a case that could reshape the way America responds to human rights abuses abroad. Does the A.T.S. secure human rights or is it a dangerous overreach? Additional music for this episode by Nicolas Carter. Special thanks to William J. Aceves, William Baude, Diego Calles, Alana Casanova-Burgess, William Dodge, Susan Farbstein, Jeffery Fisher, Joanne Freeman, Julian Ku, Nicholas Rosenkranz, Susan Simpson, Emily Vinson, Benjamin Wittes and Jamison York. Ken Saro-Wiwa Jr., who appears in this episode, passed away in October 2016. Supreme Court archival audio comes from Oyez®, a free law project in collaboration with the Legal Information Institute at Cornell. Support Radiolab by becoming a member today at Radiolab.org/donate.