Radiolab | Enemy of Mankind | Radiolab Presents: More Perfect Podcast | Season 2 Episode 2 @Radiolabpod | Uploaded May 2022 | Updated October 2024, 1 day ago.
Nine Justices hold the fate of a pivotal American human rights law in their hands. Should the U.S. Supreme Court also 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. Does the A.T.S. secure human rights or is it a dangerous overreach?

⚖️ More Perfect is a spin-off series from Radiolab about how the Supreme Court got so supreme. Listen to Season 1 here: bit.ly/3vE2jPm

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Supreme Court archival audio comes from Oyez®, a free law project in collaboration with the Legal Information Institute at Cornell.

Illustration by Mitch Boyer of Dolly Filartiga.
Video by Michael Snyder, Kim Nowacki and Andrea Latimer.