After sidestepping the issue four years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday appeared ready to reckon with a question that global businesses and human rights groups want answered: whether corporations can be held liable in U.S. courts for overseas misdeeds under the Alien Tort Statute.

Conservative justices seemed wary of corporate liability, voicing concern about a glut of worldwide tort cases and judicial interference with diplomatic relationships between the U.S. and other nations. But the lawyer arguing in favor of corporate liability seemed to gain some traction by telling the justices, more than once, that other federal laws could be deployed to block meritless lawsuits against companies.

“I’m concerned about the foreign entanglement issue,” Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. said during the hourlong argument in Jesner v. Arab Bank.

“Some ATS cases do not involve foreign relations at all,” Stanford Law School professor Jeffrey Fisher told the court. “There are many other doctrines readily available to courts to directly and effectively deal with those issues,” such as the extraterritoriality presumption that U.S laws do not apply outside the country. “The court does not need to worry that there is going to be a flood of lawsuits against banks,” he added later.

Kirkland & Ellis partner Paul Clement, representing the Arab Bank, said, “Under the ATS, we would say no corporation is liable.” The reason, he said, is that “nothing approaching a specific universal obligatory norm under international law that imposes obligations directly on corporations.”

The outcome was not “crystal clear” from the arguments, said Katherine Gallagher, senior attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights which has litigated human rights cases under the statute. But she added, “We are unlikely to end up in a situation where the court does not address corporate liability head-on.”

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