Supreme Court could rule against a 1789 law

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court appears ready to rule out lawsuits in U.S. courts against businesses by foreign victims of human rights abuses and extremist attacks.

A case argued Wednesday pitted Israeli victims of attacks in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza in the 1990s and 2000s against Jordan-based Arab Bank. The victims claim that the bank helped finance the attacks.

The issue is whether the foreigners can use an 18th century law to hold the bank accountable for its role.

The court already has limited the ability of foreign victims to sue under the 1789 Alien Tort Statute.

It appeared from the argument that the five conservative justices could find that corporations cannot be sued at all under that law. Such an outcome would be another blow to a more than 30-year-old strategy by human rights lawyers to use civil suits to pursue individuals who may be responsible for torture and other atrocities, as well as companies with operations in countries with poor records in the area of human rights.

Questions from the liberal justices indicated they would vote for allowing the lawsuit against the bank to proceed.

Victims in the case allege that the bank, through the involvement of its New York branch, knowingly distributed millions of dollars to finance suicide bombings and make “martyrdom” payments to reward the families of militants who killed civilians.

The bank denies the allegations and argues that allowing the victims’ claims to go forward would lead to diplomatic friction.

The Alien Tort Statute, adopted in part to deal with piracy claims, went unused for most of American history until rights lawyers dusted it off beginning in the late 1970s.