Is MBS Entitled to Head of State Immunity?
Editor’s Note: This article also appears in Just Security. In 2018, Saudi security agents brutally murdered journalist Jamal Khashoggi at Saudi Arabia’s consulate in Istanbul, Turkey. U.S. intelligence agencies concluded that Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman (MBS) approved the operation. In 2020, Khashoggi’s widow and a non-profit organization that he helped found sued MBS and…
Continue ReadingFifth Circuit Issues En Banc Opinion on Personal Jurisdiction over Foreign Defendants
The Fifth Circuit has issued an important en banc opinion on foreign defendants, personal jurisdiction, and the Fifth Amendment Due Process Clause. The court held in Douglass v. Nippon Yusen Kabushiki Kaisha that the Fifth Amendment Due Process Clause mirrors the Fourteenth Amendment Due Process Clause, except that the relevant sovereign is the United States…
Continue ReadingThe Extraterritorial Application of State Wage and Hour Laws
Many U.S. states have enacted wage and hour laws. These laws generally set a minimum wage and require employers to pay overtime. When a company headquartered in one state hires an employee to perform work in a foreign country, however, it is not always clear which jurisdiction’s laws will apply. Is the payment of wages…
Continue ReadingUsing TLB to Teach Civil Procedure
August invariably brings not only heat and humidity (to Nashville, anyway) but also…. the first civil procedure classes. And, more pressingly, the need for a syllabus. This post continues TLB’s series on using the blog to teach law school classes. An earlier post discussed using TLB to Teach Transnational Litigation and there are more to…
Continue ReadingA Primer on Forum Non Conveniens
Under the doctrine of forum non conveniens, a judge may dismiss a case on the understanding that the case would be better heard in another sovereign’s court. It is a judge-made discretionary doctrine that can be invoked even if the court otherwise has proper jurisdiction over the case. This primer describes the current federal doctrine…
Continue ReadingUsing TLB To Teach Transnational Litigation
One of our goals in creating TLB was to compile a set of educational resources for students and teachers. As we gear up for a new academic year, we will be running a series of posts highlighting TLB content that may be useful to professors of Civil Procedure, Foreign Relations Law, International Business Transactions (IBT),…
Continue ReadingThe Political Question Doctrine in the Lower Courts
Curt Bradley and Eric Posner have posted to SSRN a fascinating new paper about the political question doctrine. In The Real Political Question Doctrine, they take an empirical look at cases applying the doctrine in the lower federal courts since the Supreme Court’s 1962 decision in Baker v. Carr. Among other things, they find that…
Continue ReadingThrowback Thursday: The Human Rights of Foreign Sailors
Litigation in U.S. courts involving gross misconduct committed outside the United States by non-U.S. actors did not begin with the revival of the Alien Tort Statute in the 1980s. In the earlier era of global trade that centered around maritime commerce, U.S. admiralty courts at times remedied—often with moral outrage—wrongs committed on the high seas….
Continue ReadingSDNY Rejects Service by Email on Chinese Companies
In Smart Study Co. v. Acuteye-US, a federal court in the Southern District of New York (Judge Gregory Woods) rejected service by email on Chinese companies in a trademark and copyright infringement case. China and the United States are parties to the Hague Service Convention. The court reasoned that the Convention precludes service by email,…
Continue ReadingHas the Alien Tort Statute Made a Difference?
In a globalized and interconnected world, human rights litigation has, by necessity, become transnational. For decades, the Alien Tort Statute (ATS) was viewed as a beacon of American justice for foreign victims of human rights violations. However, a series of Supreme Court decisions—most recently the paired cases of Nestlé USA, Inc. v. Doe and Cargill,…
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