Modernizing Foreign Judgments Law
June 18, 2026
In 1895, the Supreme Court decided Hilton v. Guyot, the foundational case on foreign judgments law. The underlying lawsuit was straightforward. Two American entrepreneurs were sued in Paris by their French business associates in connection with a commercial dispute that occurred in France. When the plaintiffs prevailed, they brought their French money judgment to U.S. court, hoping to reach the defendants’ U.S.-based assets. With these features as backdrop—a straightforward lawsuit abroad, leading to a foreign money judgment, in a country with which U.S. courts traditionally interacted—the Supreme Court formulated a liberal rule on foreign judgments. A foreign money judgment against a U.S. citizen is presumptively binding if the rendering court had jurisdiction, the proceeding followed a “civilized jurisprudence,” and the judgment’s country of origin reciprocally gave effect to U.S. judgments.
Foreign judgments law remains largely the same today, with the exception that most U.S. courts no longer require reciprocity. But the foreign judgments that appear now often look different. This post, based on my new article, Foreign Judgments in U.S. Courts, provides a descriptive account of the current-day landscape of foreign judgments and advocates for a modernized law.
The New Landscape
Several developments have reshaped the landscape of foreign judgments since 1895. First, lawsuits and litigation strategies have become more complex. Sophisticated actors increasingly file parallel lawsuits connected to the same dispute in multiple countries. Along with the rise of parallel litigation is the growing use of foreign judgments for international preclusion where the objective is to bind the hands of American judges by precluding ongoing litigation in U.S. court. Second, the range of foreign judgments for which recognition is sought has expanded to encompass not only money judgments but also injunctions and declaratory judgments. Third, the circle of foreign judgment interlocutors has broadened. For much of U.S. history, courts were concerned about judgment circulation within a small club of judicial interlocutors, most located in continental Europe. Courts now contend with foreign judgments from unfamiliar judicial systems, most notably China. These trends often run together. Injunctive relief is sought more often in the context of parallel litigation and preclusion, and Chinese judgments reflect the full spectrum of variation.
To further chart the terrain, I undertook the most comprehensive study to date of the relationship at its center—that between the United States and China. Since the United States recognized a Chinese judgment for the first time in 2009, the number of Chinese judgments in U.S. courts has rapidly risen from a handful per year in the early 2010s to nearly twenty in 2022. A fine-grained analysis of Chinese judgments in American courts over the past decade shows that foreign judgment asset collection in the absence of parallel litigation is more dissimilar from foreign judgment preclusion within a web of parallel litigation than currently understood. These differences in political economy, sovereignty costs, and doctrinal treatment are not unique to the U.S.-China relationship but reflect inherent differences that implicate the design of foreign judgments law.
Foreign Judgments in the Absence of Parallel Litigation Seeking Asset Collection
Foreign judgments that are invoked for asset collection bear much resemblance to Hilton. The underlying foreign lawsuit tends to be straightforward. They all involve a Chinese judgment arriving at a U.S. court after the underlying substantive dispute has been litigated only in China. The prevailing plaintiff is asking first that the judgment be accepted as conclusive (recognition) and then that a U.S. court assists with collection from the judgment debtor (enforcement).
Judgments that fall into this category show distinctive patterns. They primarily appear in state courts and serve wealthy Chinese citizens pursuing other Chinese citizens who have situated their assets in the United States, often in the form of real estate. They tend to be litigated by boutique law firms and solo practitioners. Because the requirement for territorial jurisdiction over the judgment debtor is typically just the presence of assets, enforcement requests need not involve American citizens or residents at all, enabling asset collection where the underlying substantive dispute is weakly tied to the U.S. forum.
The good news for foreign judgment creditors is that asset collection requests tend to be granted. The doctrinal analysis is clearcut and relatively standard across courts. At the first step of recognition, courts are generally unpersuaded by arguments for non‑recognition, whether it be that the Chinese judicial system lacks due process, that notice was deficient, or that the post-judgment interest rate was so high as to constitute a penalty. Instead, existing precedents set exceedingly low bars for these conditions. Once recognition is achieved, the second step of asset collection requires no further legal analysis. The foreign judgment is enforced in the same manner as a sister-state or in-state judgment (depending on the state), with no practical difference between the two approaches. The bad news for judgment creditors is that most requests do not reach the merits due to difficulties serving judgment debtors and the frequency of default judgments—unsurprising given that these requests are predominantly asset chases against evasive individuals and the small businesses they own.
The main exception to this overall picture is that U.S. judges are unsure of how to handle Chinese judicial outputs that test the boundaries of what constitutes a “judgment.” These outputs include binding judicial endorsements of the outcome of court-ordered mediation (tiaojie shu) and notarized loan agreements that are certified by Chinese notary offices (gongzheng zhaiquan wenshu). Some have been denied while others are pending.
Foreign Judgments Within a Web of Parallel Litigation Seeking International Preclusion
Then, there are foreign judgments invoked for international preclusion. These cases are a far cry from Hilton. The underlying lawsuit tends to be complex, with parallel litigation in China and the United States. The legal analysis begins the same as asset collection and then diverges: the prevailing plaintiff in China is asking first that the judgment be accepted as conclusive (recognition) and then that a U.S. court adhere to the Chinese court’s determination as to part or all of the dispute, thereby limiting or foregoing its own adjudicative role (preclusion). Governing law provides that recognition operates identically regardless of whether enforcement or preclusion follows. Most states have adopted a uniform law that likens foreign country judgments to out-of-state judgments, making preclusion available to foreign judgments to the same extent and on the same terms as a sister-state judgment entitled to full faith and credit.
Judgments that fall into this category show a different set of patterns. They tend to be litigated by multinational corporations, Chinese state-owned enterprises, and other prominent institutions. The underlying controversies often have a political valence, such as a contractual dispute involving the Chinese government or a controversy concerning ownership of the diaries and manuscripts of an exiled political figure. The cases are often in subject areas like intellectual property and trade secrets that have been central to U.S.‑China economic competition. Behind the litigations are typically well-known global law firms devising complex cross-border litigation strategies. The disputes have stronger connections to the United States, as they necessarily have minimum contacts sufficient to satisfy U.S. personal jurisdiction requirements.
Compared to asset collection requests, more preclusion requests reach merits resolutions, but the results are erratic. In theory, recognition is agnostic as to whether collection or preclusion is the objective. Not so in practice. When asset collection is sought, recognition operates as a minimal screening device that easily shepherds foreign judgments to enforcement like an in-state or sister-state judgment. When preclusion is at issue, courts sometimes apply the same low standard for recognition and then give foreign judgments the same preclusive effect as a sister‑state judgment, which a straightforward reading of the law requires. Other times, courts hold that preclusion is not available to foreign judgments. The confusion does not fit neatly into foreign judgments law’s two-step analysis. Concerns central to preclusion and parallel litigation—strategic litigant behavior and jurisdictional competition—bleed into courts’ examination of recognition. Conflicting ideas about recognition—in some cases, clearly erroneous under existing law—in turn serve to control the availability of preclusion. Courts seem uneasy about foreign judgment preclusion yet uncertain of where their apprehension belongs doctrinally.
A Modern Foreign Judgments Law
Courts’ relative convergence surrounding foreign judgment asset collection and confusion surrounding foreign judgment preclusion is not surprising. The two are inherently different. Asset collection is an affirmative act of judicial assistance. By contrast, preclusion is primarily an act of forbearance that requires a U.S. court to stay its hand and forfeit its adjudicative role. Asset collection exacts a limited cost on the forum’s sovereign ability to exercise adjudicative authority because it is sought either (1) where a U.S. court could not take on the underlying dispute for want of personal jurisdiction, or (2) where a U.S. court could exercise jurisdiction, but the litigants have not filed suit here. By comparison, preclusion exacts a greater sovereignty cost because a U.S. court could and is actively adjudicating the dispute, and the question is whether to transfer that decision-making authority to a foreign court.
Doctrinally, the problem is two-fold. First, as a matter of structure, it is insufficient to differentiate asset collection from preclusion at the second step while treating them the same at the first step of recognition. There is no reason why the very different purposes of enforcement and preclusion need to be conjoined by the same minimal hurdle that then confers treatment as a sister-state judgment. That courts often do not follow this law in practice reflects the mismatch between the doctrine and judges’ intuitions. Given their divergent impacts on sovereignty, the easily met requirements for recognition are better suited for asset collection than preclusion. It would make more sense to limit the existing doctrine of recognition to collecting on foreign money judgments while leaving the question of foreign judgment preclusion open for reconsideration. Structurally, that would mean replacing the current two-step analysis that begins with the same first step with two entirely separate tests.
Next, likening recognized foreign country judgments to sister-state judgments—a shorthand used at step two in both asset collection and preclusion contexts—is inapt. For asset collection, the analogy is unnecessary. Some states already stipulate that a recognized foreign judgment be enforced in the same manner as an in-state judgment, which, in any case, is exactly how a sister-state judgment would be enforced. Those states that provide for enforcement in the same manner as a sister-state judgment can thus easily replace sister-state with in-state judgment.
For preclusion, removing the analogy to sister-state judgments is not enough because there is no adequate replacement once the shorthand is eliminated. Existing rules for international preclusion are defined solely with reference to those that apply to sister-state judgments, but neither sister-state judgments nor in-state judgments are suitable reference points given the sovereignty costs attending preclusion. There is no reason to think—and many reasons to challenge—that a foreign country judgment should have the same ability to displace the adjudicatory role of a U.S. court as would be given to a prior judgment rendered by the same court or by the court of a sister state. Once the analogy to sister states is jettisoned, a new set of preclusion rules designed for the international context is needed.
Conclusion
The shifting landscape of foreign judgments calls for a modernized law. That law ought to decouple asset collection from preclusion, limiting the application of the existing rules for recognition to only asset collection. Meanwhile, international preclusion ought to be reconceptualized from first principles, unconstrained by the established rules for recognition and inter-state preclusion.