68 Am. U. L. Rev. 1707 (2019).

* Ramona L. Lampley is a Professor of Law at St. Mary’s University School of Law in San Antonio, Texas.  She teaches sales, secured transactions, civil procedure, modern litigation practice, e-discovery, and commercial paper.  Professor Lampley has been published in the Washington Law Review, BYU Law Review, Cornell’s Journal of Law and Public Policy, and Essentials of E-discovery.  Professor Lampley is chair of the Article 2 subcommittee of the ABA’s Business Law Section UCC Committee.  She is also a member of the Working Group to Draft Human Rights Protections in International Supply Contracts and co-author of Texas Practice Series:  Consumer Rights and Remedies (West 2019).  She owes deep gratitude to Randy Jeffries and Katina Zampas for their thorough research and deep concern over the issues discussed in this piece.  She also would like to thank David Snyder and Susan Maslow for spear-heading the Working Group, Chris Johnson for providing her with initial research leads, all members of the Working Group for providing a platform where this work has come to fruition, Stephen Ware and Christopher Drahozal for their detailed comments, and the members of the University of Kansas School of Law faculty who provided thoughtful feedback and a warm forum for discussion. Finally, the author thanks Nicholas T. Hillman and the members of the American University Law Review for hosting the symposium and for their diligent work in publishing this set of works.

For U.S. companies with forced labor or child labor in the supply chain, litigation is on the rise.  This Article surveys the current litigation landscape involving forced labor in the supply chain.  It ultimately concludes that domestic corporations that source from international suppliers should adopt the Model Contract Clauses drafted by the ABA Business Law Section Working Group to Draft Human Rights Protections in International Supply Contracts (“Working Group”).  This Article traces the origins of cases involving supply chain forced labor, beginning with the early employee negligence cases that form the backdrop of existing case law and the cornerstone of the Model Contract disclaimers.  Part III turns to the evolving consumer class actions based on deceptive trade practices.  Part IV addresses the complexities of employee-based cases alleging violations of the ATS, and by comparison, this Part also illustrates why the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act (TVPRA) extraterritorial jurisdictional grant may provide fertile ground for domestic litigation involving foreign forced labor in the supply chain.  Finally, Part V discusses the origin of the disclaimer clauses in the MCCs proposed by the Working Group, and the arguments in favor of using the MCCs as a foundation for reducing abusive labor practices in the supply chain, even for those brought under the TVPRA.  The Article concludes that the threat of domestic liability is on a steady upward trajectory, and businesses are well-advised to begin incorporating contractual rights and remedies to deal with the problem of forced labor in the supply chain, but in a way that does not increase the potential for domestic liability.