The majority opinion of the Supreme Court establishes precedent, but separate opinion writing affords the justices the ability to expound upon it or express their disagreement with the ruling or its logic. We broaden the exploration of separate opinion writing to consider how decisions and case features at the moment of granting cert shape justices’ decisions to engage in nonconsensual behavior. We also sharpen the focus on external actors to consider the nature of amici curiae. Through an empirical study of Supreme Court cases between 1986 and 1993, we find that aspects of the agenda-setting stage affect justices’ decisions at the litigation stage. In addition, we find that the number of briefs and the diversity of organized interests impacted by the case is particularly relevant to justices. The decision to write a separate opinion is the product of internal and external factors over the full course of a case’s history.

Interest groups often post about their judicial advocacy on social media. We argue that they do so for two main reasons. First, providing information about the courts on social media builds the group’s credibility as a source of information with policymakers, media and the public. Second, social media provides a way to claim credit for litigation activity and outcomes, which can increase membership and aid in fundraising. Using original datasets of millions of tweets and Facebook posts by interest groups, we provide evidence that interest groups use social media for public education and to credit claim for their litigation activity.

The almost two decade-long bonanza of civil litigation concerning gross human rights violations committed by corporations under the US Alien Tort Statute 1789 was scaled back by the US Supreme Court in Kiobel v Royal Dutch Petroleum in April 2013. The court restricted the territorial reach of human rights claims against transnational corporations by holding that the presumption against extra-territoriality applied to the Act. Thus Shell, the Dutch/British defendant, and the role it played in the brutal suppression by the Nigerian military of the Ogoni peoples' protest movement against the environmental devastation caused by oil exploration, lay outside the territorial scope of the Act. Legal accountability must lie in a State with a stronger connection with the dispute. While this article briefly engages with the Supreme Court decision, its main focus is on the attitude of Western governments to the corporate human rights litigation under the ATS as articulated in their amicus briefs. In these briefs they objected to the statute's excessive extraterritoriality and horizontal application of human rights to artificial non-State actors. In these two respects corporate ATS litigation created significant inroads into the conventional State-centric approach to human rights and thus provided an opportunity for more effective human rights enjoyment. This article tests the validity of the objections of Western governments to corporate human rights obligations under the ATS against the norms of public international law and against the substantive demands arising out of the shortfalls of the international human rights enforcement.