Latest in Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act
Conventional wisdom and many lower court cases hold that foreign states are not entitled to constitutionally based personal jurisdiction protections in federal courts because they are not “persons” protected by the Fifth Amendment. That reasoning is incorrect.
On Feb. 27, the Supreme Court issued a 7-1 opinion in Jam v. International Financial Corporation, deciding that international organizations have the same level of immunity from lawsuits granted to foreign governments.
On Friday, Solicitor General Noel Francisco filed a brief on behalf of the special counsel's office regarding In Re Grand Jury Subpoena, the case concerning the special counsel's attempt to subpoena an unnamed company owned by an unnamed foreign government. The brief argues that the Supreme Court should deny the corporation's petition for a writ of certiorari. The brief is available below.
The opinion, like the brief judgment previously released by the court, does not decide the important question of whether or not the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act affords immunity to foreign states and state-owned enterprises in criminal cases.
What connection does the court battle over the subpoena of an unidentified state-owned company have to the Mueller investigation?
The Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act and the International Organizations Immunities Act should not be read to mean that the former governs all questions of the immunity of international organizations.
A summary of the latest Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act case to make its way to the Supreme Court.
Whether Russia can claim immunity in the DNC’s lawsuit may turn on “where” the DNC was hacked. Precedent in the D.C. Circuit indicates that answering that question isn’t easy.
A little-noticed bill to amend the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (“FSIA”) passed both houses of Congress in December and was signed into law by President Obama on Dec. 16, 2016. The bill (“ The Foreign Cultural Exchange Jurisdictional Immunity Clarification Act (FCEJCA)” or “Art Museum Amendment”) narrows the expropriation exception in the FSIA to provide greater immunity for foreign states which send works of art to the United States for temporary exhibit. Unfortunately, the FCEJA may ultimately be more harmful than helpful to foreign states.
JASTA invites shrinkage of sovereign immunity abroad that will harm the United States and impede our antiterrorism activities, result in default judgments and refusals to pay rather than any justice to victims, and bizarrely privatizes antiterrorism by leaving it to litigants and judges to determine what states sponsor terrorism.