Ingrid (Wuerth) Brunk

Supreme Court decides Halkbank

The Supreme Court issued its opinion in Halkbank this morning.  The Court held that the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act does not apply to criminal prosecutions and remanded the case to consider common law immunity.  More coverage soon on TLB.

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A Primer on Foreign Sovereign Immunity

The immunity of states from the jurisdiction of foreign domestic courts is a long-standing and mostly uncontroversial principle of customary international law. The International Court of Justice has described foreign sovereign immunity as a procedural doctrine of international law, one that “derives from the principle of sovereign equality of the States.” As a practical matter,…

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New Scholarship on Sanctions and Central Bank Immunity

Ingrid has a new paper out on recent developments in central bank immunity, focusing on sanctions by the United States and other countries involving Russian, Afghan, and Venezuelan central bank assets and their relationship to immunity. Some of the issues addressed in the paper involve transnational litigation in U.S. courts, including the entitlement of sovereign…

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Happy Birthday to TLB!

On March 28, 2022, TLB published its first post. Since then, we have published 245 more. Over the past year, the site has received more than 32,000 visitors from 82 different countries. Roughly half of those readers are based in the United States. Our most frequent non-U.S. visitors are based (in rough order) in (1)…

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Mark Your Calendars!  Transnational Litigation Events at 2023 ASIL Annual Meeting

On March 29 – April 1, the American Society of International Law will hold its 117th Annual Meeting in Washington, D.C. Registration is open for a few more hours, until March 27 at 3:30pm ET.  There are several events that may be of particular interest to TLB readers. Ingrid will convene the Eighth Annual Vagts…

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Supreme Court Ducks Fifth Amendment Due Process Question

The Supreme Court denied certiorari yesterday in Douglass v. Nippon Yusen Kabushiki Kaisha. This highly-watched case raises an important question that the Court will have to address sooner or later:  the Fifth Amendment due process limitations on personal jurisdiction. The Supreme Court’s personal jurisdiction cases have repeatedly interpreted the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment…

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District Court Refuses to Let 9/11 Plaintiffs Have Afghan Central Bank Assets

The District Court for the Southern District of New York (Judge George Daniels) has denied the turnover motions filed by judgment creditors against assets of Da Afghanistan Bank (“DAB”) that are held at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York (“FRBNY”). Judge Daniels’ order and decision, issued on February 21, 2023, adopted the report and…

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Hiring Announcement

The American Society of International Law is hiring for two important positions: Director of Finance and Administration and Director of Programs.  These are key positions with a wonderful organization.  More information here.

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PGA v. LIV: Golf, Discovery, Immunity and PIF — The Saudi Arabian Sovereign Wealth Fund

Just as the competition between PGA Tour and LIV Golf has divided the golf world, so too may the immunity issues raised by the litigation divide legal experts. Sadly, this post is pretty weak in terms of golf puns – par for the course in legal writing about immunities – but it does address interesting…

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Throwback Thursday: Forty Years of the Bancec Test

The Supreme Court’s 1983 decision in First National City Bank v. Banco Para El Comercio Exterior de Cuba was saddled with a cumbersome mouthful of a title, one confusingly similar to a 1972 opinion in another important case, First National City Bank v. Banco Nacional de Cuba.  Fortunately, the 1983 decision was quickly dubbed Bancec, an…

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Ingrid (Wuerth) Brunk

Vanderbilt Law School
ingrid.wuerth@vanderbilt.eduEmail

William Dodge

UC Davis School of Law
wsdodge@ucdavis.eduEmail

Maggie Gardner

Cornell Law School
mgardner@cornell.eduEmail

John F. Coyle

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

Zachary D. Clopton

Northwestern Pritzker School of Law
zclopton@law.northwestern.eduEmail

Will Moon

University of Maryland
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William K. McGoughran

Vanderbilt Law School
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Chimène Keitner

UC Davis School of Law
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Catherine Amirfar

Debevoise & Plimpton LLP
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Justin R. Rassi

Debevoise & Plimpton LLP
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Isabelle Glimcher

Debevoise & Plimpton LLP
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Ben Köhler

Max Planck Institute for Comparative and International Private Law
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Aaron D. Simowitz

Willamette University College of Law
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Timothy D. Lytton

Georgia State University College of Law
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Chukwuma Okoli

University of Birmingham
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Abubakri Yekini

University of Manchester
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