There are a million reasons why companies should worry about who they do business with. Increasingly, an obscure law from the birth of the United States is one of them.
The law is the Alien Tort Claims Act, passed in 1789 to let foreign citizens file actions in U.S. courts for violations of “international law.” Ever more often, activists—investor and otherwise—are using the Washington-era law to press cases against companies over a very 21st century issue: human rights.
