10/03/2012
This post is by Amol Mehra and Katie Shay
On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court considered a case that strikes at the core of corporate social responsibility, Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum (Shell). The Kiobel plaintiffs allege that Shell was complicit in egregious human rights violations including rape, torture, and the extrajudicial killings of peaceful protesters who objected to Shell’s presence in Ogoniland, Nigeria. Shell, a Dutch corporation, argued that the law used to bring the company before a U.S. court, the Alien Tort Statute (ATS), should not apply. The multinational corporation argued that there is too tenuous a connection between what allegedly happened in Nigeria and the United States. Shell is essentially fighting to limit a law that remedies human rights abuses wherever they occur.