Personal Jurisdiction, Consent, and the Law of Agency
I have long argued – in articles, blog posts, and amicus briefs – that it violates due process to invoke a forum selection clause to obtain personal jurisdiction over a defendant who was not a party to the agreement in which the clause appears. This position has not yet achieved universal acceptance. The state courts in…
Continue ReadingMore on Serving Foreign Defendants’ U.S. Counsel to Avoid the Hague Service Convention
In April, one of us wrote a post describing a case in which Judge Carol Bagley Amon (Eastern District of New York) relied on New York rules to order service on foreign defendants through their U.S. counsel. Because the service was completed in the United States, there was no occasion to transmit documents for service…
Continue ReadingWelcome, Hannah Buxbaum!
We are excited to announce that Hannah Buxbaum has joined us as a TLB editor! Hannah is an esteemed scholar who writes on jurisdiction, extraterritoriality, and other topics related to international litigation and comparative law. Regular readers may recall her posts on anti-suit injunctions and on the Venezuelan deportation litigation. Hannah just joined the law…
Continue ReadingTrump Administration Backs Helms-Burton Plaintiffs in Two CVSGs
Last week, the Solicitor General filed briefs recommending that the Supreme Court grant review in two cases under the Helms-Burton Act. Passed in 1996, Helms-Burton allows U.S. nationals who own claims to property expropriated by Cuba to sue any person who traffics in such property, potentially for three times the value of the claim. Under…
Continue ReadingNew Paper on Forum Non Conveniens and Foreign Sovereigns
When a foreign sovereign files a lawsuit in the United States, is it ever appropriate for the court to dismiss on the grounds that it would be more appropriate for the suit to be litigated in that sovereign’s own courts? This is the question that Eunsun Cho set out to answer in a student note…
Continue ReadingHavlish v. Taliban—Second Circuit Affirms that Afghanistan Central Bank Assets are Immune from Attachment
The Second Circuit has finally decided whether frozen Afghan central bank assets can be attached or turned over to satisfy judgments against the Taliban for acts of terrorism against U.S. citizens. The court answered “no” in Havlish v. Taliban over one partial dissent. The case presents complex and important issues, and although both the majority…
Continue ReadingTrademark Infringement and Exports after Abitron
Two years ago, in Abitron Austria GmbH v. Hetronic International, Inc. (2023), the Supreme Court applied the presumption against extraterritoriality to the federal trademark statute (the Lanham Act), holding that the Act applies only to domestic conduct. Abitron involved imports. Products bearing an infringing trademark were made abroad, some of which were sold, directly or…
Continue Reading*Another* Federal Statute Relating to Foreign Judgments
The standard story relating to the enforcement of foreign judgments in the United States goes something like this: There is a special federal statute—the SPEECH Act—that applies to foreign judgments for libel or defamation. The State Department is currently in the process of drafting a federal statute that would implement the Hague Judgments Convention and…
Continue ReadingUsing TLB to Teach International Business Transactions (2025 Update)
As the fall semester gets underway, we are updating our posts on using resources on TLB to teach various classes. This post discusses International Business Transactions (IBT). Although TLB focuses on litigation and IBT focuses on transactions, there is a great deal of overlap. The most obvious examples are contractual clauses that plan for dispute resolution,…
Continue ReadingUsing TLB to Teach Civil Procedure (2025 Update)
As the fall semester gets underway, we are updating our posts on using resources on TLB to teach various classes. This post gathers materials that can complement a standard civil procedure course, whether by providing concise overviews of doctrines, distilling Supreme Court developments, or suggesting recent cases that can spark discussions of perennial procedural issues….
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