(thread)
Three most notable things to me about today's @Nestle/ @Cargill #ChildTrafficking case at #SCOTUS:
1) Trump admin's disingenuous legal jujitsu move of claiming that it would be "discriminatory" to subject US corporations to US human rights lawsuits.

SCOTUS had previously ruled that foreign corporations can't be sued in Alien Tort Statute cases primarily due to foreign policy conflicts. So it's quite the move to claim that this then applies to shield US corporations, too.

It's the equivalent of saying, for example: US courts can't prosecute Iraqi soldiers for human rights abuses in Iraq, so it would be "discriminatory" for US courts to prosecute US soldiers for human rights abuses in Iraq.

2) Questions from several justices, including #Kavanaugh and #Alito, indicating that they understood that @neal_katyal position was extreme - that it would lead to terrible results.

Some of these justices may yet find another way to make these child slavery victims lose, of course. But they did not seem eager to adopt the corporate immunity position, and Justice Kagan savaged Katyal for it.

3) #JusticeBarrett's question to Paul Hoffman (representing plaintiffs) about how this case interacts with the Alien Tort Statute's original purpose of upholding US obligations under international law.

Hard to tell whether #Barrett was getting at the possibility that the US would diminish its international stature if it did not provide remedies for violations of intl law here - or whether she was suggesting that the intl community simply wouldn't care.