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Should the U.S. Supreme Court be the court of the world? In the 18th cen­tu­ry, two feud­ing French­men inspired a one-sen­tence law that helped launch Amer­i­can human rights lit­i­ga­tion into the 20th cen­tu­ry. The Alien Tort Statute allowed a Paraguayan woman to find jus­tice for a ter­ri­ble crime com­mit­ted in her home­land. But as Amer­i­ca reached fur­ther and fur­ther out into the world, the court was forced to con­front the con­tra­dic­tions in our country’s ide­ol­o­gy: sym­pa­thy vs. sov­er­eign­ty. Ear­li­er this month, the Supreme Court heard argu­ments in Jes­ner v. Arab Bank, a case that could reshape the way Amer­i­ca responds to human rights abus­es abroad. Does the A.T.S. secure human rights or is it a dan­ger­ous overreach?