Oral Argument Recap: Reid v. Doe Run Resources Corp.
On Tuesday, the Eighth Circuit heard oral argument in Reid v. Doe Run Resources Corp., an ad hoc interlocutory appeal limited to the question of whether the district court should have abstained in that case based on foreign policy concerns. The facts of the case are described in a prior post. This post summarizes Tuesday’s…
Continue ReadingNinth Circuit Decides Cassirer in Favor of Spain
In 2005, Claude Cassirer sued a state-owned museum in Spain to recover a painting by Camille Pissarro that the Nazis stole from his grandmother. The case went to the U.S. Supreme Court on a choice-of-law question, and the Court held that state, rather than federal, choice-of-law rules should determine the applicable law in cases under…
Continue ReadingNew Empirical Study on CISG Litigation
There are a number of empirical studies about the United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods (CISG). A recent intervention by Carolina Arlota and Brian McCall, When Federal Law Goes Unnoticed: Assessing the CISG’s Applicability Across U.S. Courts Based on an Empirical Research of Decisions from 1988 to 2020, in the…
Continue ReadingHappy New Year!
TLB will be on winter break until January 9, 2024. We wish you all the best in the new year!
Continue ReadingTop 10 Posts of 2023
Many of our most popular pages in 2023 were our topic pages and primers, as we highlighted yesterday. We are grateful that our library of resources is proving useful to you, our readers. Beyond that evergreen content, here is a count-down of our 10 most-read posts of 2023: 10. Second Circuit Rejects Consent-Based Jurisdiction over…
Continue ReadingTLB in 2023
We at TLB are grateful for both the breadth and the depth of engagement by you, our readers. Here is our year at TLB by the numbers:
Continue ReadingU.S. Brief in Halkbank Abandons Customary International Law in Immunity Cases
In Turkiye Halk Bankasi A.S. v. United States (Halkbank), the Supreme Court held that the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (FSIA) does not apply to criminal proceedings. The Court remanded Halkbank’s separate claim of common law immunity to the Second Circuit for reconsideration. On November 20, 2023, after two extensions, the United States filed its brief on remand. The U.S….
Continue ReadingNew Article on Cross-Border Discovery
In the most recent issue of Judicature, Judge Michael Baylson and Professor Steven Gensler have a new article related to cross-border discovery—that is, discovery abroad in support of adjudication in U.S. courts. The whole article is worth readers’ time, though I will only briefly summarize it here. As TLB readers know well, cross-border discovery is…
Continue ReadingIncorporation by Reference and Choice of Law
The choice-of-law clause written into the contract of carriage for Delta Air Lines, Inc. (Delta) states that the agreement “shall be governed by and enforced in accordance with the laws of the United States of America and, to the extent not preempted by Federal law, the laws of the State of Georgia.” In a recent…
Continue ReadingChina’s New Foreign State Immunity Law: Some Foreign Relations Aspects
On September 1, 2023, the Standing Committee of China’s National People’s Congress (NPC Standing Committee) passed the Law of the People’s Republic of China on Foreign State Immunity (FSIL) (English translation here). The FSIL will enter into force on January 1, 2024. This law heralds a fundamental shift of China’s attitude towards foreign state immunity,…
Continue Reading