Jurisdiction Trumps Ethics: A Rhetorical History of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Ruling in Nestlé

Abstract

The Nestlé USA Inc. v. Doe et al. U.S. Supreme Court case presented ethical allegations concerning the corporations’ use of trafficked child laborers in the Ivory Coast, yet the Court ruled in favor of the corporations in an 8-1 ruling. The Court determined that the plaintiffs sought an extraterritorial application of the Alien Tort Statute and thus dismissed the case on jurisdictional grounds. Little attention has been paid to how the petitioners defending Nestlé were able to persuade the Court despite the allegations raised by the plaintiffs. By conducting a rhetorical history of the petitioner’s brief, the oral argument, and the Court’s decision it becomes clear that common rhetorical tactics existed to justify a jurisdiction-based argument to subvert the plaintiffs’ allegations. An analysis of the rhetorical tactics employed by the petitioner and the Court demonstrates a rhetoricity of the law that lent itself toward a jurisdictionally driven decision by the Court.