Latest in Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act
The district court’s dismissal of the State of Missouri’s billion-dollar lawsuit against China over its COVID response bodes ill for similar remaining coronavirus-related suits.
The relationship between foreign sovereign immunity and sanctions against central banks is important but often mischaracterized.
On Monday, Nov. 8, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit denied a motion to dismiss a lawsuit against NSO Group Technologies, an Israeli company.
On Friday, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) released a declassified opinion by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) detailing limited circumstances under which the government may sequester information that was collected unlawfully.
As cyber threats during the coronavirus pandemic increase, Congress has considered allowing private lawsuits against foreign states for alleged unauthorized cyber activity. This response would create more problems than it solves.
NSO Group filed a motion to dismiss WhatsApp’s lawsuit over the alleged hacking of 1,400 cellphones running the WhatsApp application. The motion to dismiss involved one curious claim: NSO claimed derivative sovereign immunity from suit.
Lawfare's biweekly roundup of U.S.-China technology policy news.
I have an op-ed in today’s Washington Post arguing that lifting China's immunity would be a mistake. Here are some excerpts.
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 as a matter of constitutional text and history, and it leads to poor results as a matter of policy for reasons explored at length in a forthcoming article and summarized here.
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.