Professor Dodge files Supreme Court amicus brief in human rights cases

On Oct. 21, Professor William S. Dodge filed an amicus brief at the U.S. Supreme Court in Nestlé U.S.A., Inc. v. Doe I and Cargill, Inc. v. Doe I, two cases alleging that U.S. corporations participated in child slavery in Ivory Coast. The brief argues that customary international law permits the United States to hold U.S. corporations liable under the Alien Tort Statute (ATS) for violating fundamental human rights norms. The brief was joined by Karima Bennoune (Davis), Sarah Cleveland (Columbia), Lori Damrosch (Columbia), Richard Goldstone (South Africa Supreme Court, retired), Campbell McLachlan (Victoria-Wellington), Saira Mohamed (Berkeley), Gerald Neuman (Harvard), Steven Ratner (Michigan), August Reinisch (Vienna), and Ralph Steinhardt (George Washington).

Professor Dodge is Martin Luther King Jr. Professor of Law and John D. Ayer Chair in Business Law at UC Davis School of Law. He is a leading expert on international law, international transactions, and international dispute resolution, who served as Counselor on International Law to the Legal Adviser at the U.S. Department of State from 2011 to 2012 and as a reporter for the American Law Institute’s Restatement (Fourth) of Foreign Relations Law from 2012 to 2018. Professor Dodge is a co-author of the casebook Transnational Business Problems and a co-editor of International Law in the U.S. Supreme Court: Continuity and Change, which won the American