Rules of decision for issues arising under the Alien Tort Statute

Since Filartiga v. Pena-Irala and the beginning of the modern line of Alien Tort Statute (ATS) cases, courts have struggled to find the appropriate source of law to apply to a variety of issues that such cases raise. This Note argues that, for at least some questions of law presented by ATS cases, the two-step approach established by Kimbell Foods for determining the appropriate rule of decision in federal cases can be used: After determining that the issue is one that permits a federal rule of decision, federal courts should ask whether the state rule should be adopted as the federal rule. As an example, the Note examines the Ninth Circuit's opinion in Doe I v. Unocal and evaluates whether state law could have been used in that case as the federal rule of decision for determining the appropriate standards to establish corporate complicity liability for ATS violations.