MBS’s Appointment as Saudi Prime Minister Gives Him Head-of-State Immunity
On Tuesday, King Salman appointed Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman (MBS) as Prime Minister of Saudi Arabia. The appointment makes MBS Saudi Arabia’s head of government, thereby entitling him to “head of state” immunity under U.S. law and customary international law. The appointment comes just days before an October 3 court deadline for the U.S….
Continue ReadingThe U.S. Supreme Court, October Term 2022
Today, the U.S. Supreme Court holds its first conference of the October 2022 Term. The term will officially open next week on the first Monday of October. To help readers keep track of petitions and cases raising interesting questions about transnational litigation, we are pleased to announce our new Supreme Court page. At today’s conference,…
Continue ReadingTransnational Litigation Anticipation: Previewing the Court’s Next Term
TLB recently recapped the Supreme Court’s transnational litigation cases from last Term. This post looks ahead to the upcoming Term, for which the Court has already granted certiorari in a personal jurisdiction case that may have implications for transnational litigation. TLB is also tracking several interesting petitions for certiorari in disputes involving the Foreign Sovereign…
Continue ReadingHow Congress Should Designate Russia a State Sponsor of Terrorism
Cross Posted at Just Security Appearing before the United Nations General Assembly late last week, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy renewed his call for the designation of Russia as a state sponsor of terrorism. Proponents of the designation argue that it would ratchet up sanctions–making it more difficult for Russia to continue the war against Ukraine–and…
Continue ReadingSolicitor General Recommends That Supreme Court Hear Extraterritorial Trademark Case
Last Friday, the Solicitor General (SG) recommended that the Supreme Court hear Abitron Austria GmbH v. Hetronic International, Inc. to consider when the federal trademark statute, known as the Lanham Act, applies extraterritorially. A jury found that five German and Austrian companies infringed Hetronic International’s trademarks and awarded damages of more than $90 million for violations…
Continue ReadingReflections on the New Edition of International Civil Litigation in United States Courts
Over twenty years ago, a horrible accident occurred at the ski resort of Kaprun, Austria. At that time, I was a young attorney working at a European law firm. The firm’s partners read about new lawsuits, filed in the United States, that threatened to bring all the procedural tools of the United States judicial system…
Continue ReadingDistrict Court Interprets Geographic Scope of the Commodity Exchange Act
In a recent decision, CFTC v. WorldWideMarkets Ltd., the federal district court for the District of New Jersey (Judge Kevin McNulty) interpreted the geographic scope of the Commodity Exchange Act (CEA), holding that two of its provisions apply only when irrevocable liability for a transaction is incurred within the United States. The decision aligns the…
Continue ReadingContractual Waivers of Foreign Sovereign Immunity
The Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (FSIA) provides that foreign states are immune from suit in the United States unless an exception applies. An important and long-standing exception to immunity is consent (the more common term in international practice) or waiver (the term used in the United States). The FSIA provides that a foreign state shall…
Continue ReadingSurveying Extraterritoriality
TLB advisor Hannah Buxbaum has posted to SSRN a piece entitled “The Practice(s) of Extraterritoriality.” It is an introductory chapter from the book Extraterritoriality/L’extraterritorialité, edited by Buxbaum and Thibaut Fleury Graff, which grew out of the 2019 Centre for Studies and Research at the Hague Academy of International Law. Buxbaum’s chapter is a masterful survey of extraterritoriality…
Continue ReadingThrowback Thursday: Timberlane Lumber Co. v. Bank of America
Although the relevant text of the Sherman Act remained unchanged for most of the twentieth century, courts’ interpretations of its extraterritorial reach fluctuated dramatically. In 1909, the U.S. Supreme Court adopted a territorial approach in American Banana, described in a recent post, holding that the Sherman Act applied only to anticompetitive conduct in the United…
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