Posts

When Are Frozen Assets “Blocked” Assets?

The U.S. government’s efforts to quash the attachment of Iranian assets by victims of state-sponsored terrorism have been rejected by the D.C. Circuit.  In Estate of Levin v. Wells Fargo Bank, N.A., the court of appeals reversed Judge Boasberg’s decision in favor of the government, and apparently created a split with the Fifth and Seventh…

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U.S. Covid Lawsuits Against China

[This post is based on a keynote address delivered at a webinar on “Law Across Borders” hosted by the Chinese Journal of Transnational Law on October 16, 2025.] At a conference at Wuhan University two years ago, I provided a U.S. perspective on China’s new Foreign State Immunity Law. By passing this law, China adopted…

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International Law Weekend!

This year’s International Law Weekend, an event offered by the International Law Association, takes place October 23-25 in New York City. The program has several panels that may be of interest to TLB readers, including these two: Crisis, Courts, and Sovereigns: Rethinking Immunity and Enforcement in a Shifting Global Order Friday, October 24, 11:30AM-12:45PM in…

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Scholarship Critical of “Schedule A” Cases

A growing chorus of scholarly concern about “Schedule A” cases appears to be catching the attention of some district courts. In a “Schedule A” case, a holder of U.S. intellectual property rights will sue a large collection of defendants, often online merchants based outside of the United States, which it will list in a “Schedule…

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The New State Capitalism and Foreign Sovereign Immunity

As governments play an increasingly aggressive and direct role in capitalist economic systems (the “new state capitalism”), the line between sovereign and commercial conduct may become more difficult to draw for the purposes of foreign sovereign immunity. For example, Switzerland acted in some ways like a private investment bank when it negotiated a 2023 deal…

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D.C. Circuit Allows Venezuela Expropriation Case to Proceed

On October 3, 2025, the D.C. Circuit issued its latest opinion in Helmerich & Payne International Drilling Co. v. Venezuela. Judge Gregory G. Katsas affirmed the district court’s rulings that the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act’s (FSIA) expropriation exception allows the plaintiff’s claim, that the district court has personal jurisdiction, and that the act of state…

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Court Rejects Trump Administration’s Immunity Statement in UNRWA Case

A federal court has rejected the Trump administration statement of interest regarding the immunity of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA). In the Estate of Tamar Kedem Simon Tov et al. v. United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) et al. (SDNY), foreign nationals allege that UNRWA and individual defendants knowingly aided and…

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SDNY Grants Anti-Suit Injunction Against TV Azteca

For the past several years, parallel litigation has been ongoing in Mexico and the United States between the Mexican media conglomerate TV Azteca, S.A.B. de C.V. and The Bank of New York Mellon (BNY), the Indenture Trustee for a series of TV Azteca’s unsecured notes. Two weeks ago, Judge Paul G. Gardephe (SDNY) granted BNY’s…

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Limits on Damages for Breach of a Forum Selection Clause

Tanya Monestier and I recently posted a draft of a new paper, Limits on Damages for Breach of a Forum Selection Clause, that discusses an important issue at the intersection of contract law and conflict of laws—when it is appropriate to award damages for breach of an exclusive forum selection clause. We build on Tanya’s…

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Transnational Litigation at the Supreme Court, October Term 2025

Today is the first day of the Supreme Court’s October Term. This post briefly discusses transnational litigation cases in which the Court has already granted cert, as well as others that are in the pipeline and could be decided this Term. Cases in which the Court Has Granted Cert So far, the Supreme Court has…

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Ingrid (Wuerth) Brunk

Vanderbilt Law School
ingrid.brunk@vanderbilt.eduEmail

William Dodge

George Washington University Law School
william.dodge@law.gwu.eduEmail

Maggie Gardner

Cornell Law School
mgardner@cornell.eduEmail

John F. Coyle

University of North Carolina School of Law
jfcoyle@email.unc.eduEmail

Hannah Buxbaum

UC Davis School of Law
hbuxbaum@ucdavis.eduEmail

Mehrunnisa Chaudhry

George Washington University Law School
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Victoria Pino

Vanderbilt Law School
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Robert Kry

MoloLamken LLP
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Rinat Gareev

Whitecliff Management
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