The Most-Viewed TLB Posts of 2025
To celebrate the end of another year at TLB, I wanted to highlight the posts that received the most views in 2025. A Primer on Choice-of-Law Clauses A Primer on Choice of Law Choice-of-Law Methodologies: Updating the List Throwback Thursday: The Tate Letter and Foreign Sovereign Immunity The $24 Billion Judgment Against China in Missouri’s…
Continue ReadingHappy New Year!
TLB will be on break until January 6, 2026. We wish you all the best in the new year!
Continue ReadingThe Marginal Utility of Choice-of-Law Clauses
I spend a lot of time researching and writing and thinking about choice-of-law clauses. So much so that I sometimes worry that I’ve fallen victim to a cognitive bias known as the law of the instrument or (more colorfully) Maslow’s Hammer. This bias arises when a person acquires a specific skill and thereafter looks for…
Continue ReadingArizona Supreme Court Rejects the “Closely Related” Doctrine
When may a litigant take advantage of a forum selection clause in a contract that he never signed? This is a question that has attracted considerable attention from the courts (and on this blog). Historically, a non-party was covered by a clause only when permitted under such doctrines as assumption, agency, piercing the corporate veil,…
Continue ReadingRecognizing Foreign Judgments
When cocktail party conversations turn to foreign judgments—as they often do—it is common to hear people speak of “recognizing and enforcing” such judgments. This is unsurprising because the typical case involves both recognition and enforcement of a foreign judgment. In some cases, however, a U.S. court may be called upon to recognize a judgment but…
Continue ReadingThe CISG Saves the Day
The United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods (CISG) has long been something of an enigma to American lawyers. The available evidence suggests that many U.S. lawyers are unaware of this treaty’s existence nearly forty years after it was ratified. In many cases, U.S. lawyers are upset to learn, first, that…
Continue ReadingLimits on Damages for Breach of a Forum Selection Clause
Tanya Monestier and I recently posted a draft of a new paper, Limits on Damages for Breach of a Forum Selection Clause, that discusses an important issue at the intersection of contract law and conflict of laws—when it is appropriate to award damages for breach of an exclusive forum selection clause. We build on Tanya’s…
Continue ReadingThe Billion-Dollar Determination of Foreign Law Question
The ongoing litigation in New York relating to the validity of certain notes issued by Venezuela’s state-owned oil company has received extensive coverage here at TLB. In 2022, I explained that the case presented a billion-dollar choice-of-law question. That choice-of-law question was answered in 2024 when the New York Court of Appeals held the validity…
Continue ReadingOpting Out of Federal Law II: Foreign Choice-of-Law Clauses
In a prior post, I examined when a choice-of-law clause selecting the law of a U.S. state may be used to avoid federal laws. In this post, I consider whether a choice-of-law clause selecting the law of a foreign country may be used to accomplish this same goal. The post first examines situations where the…
Continue ReadingOpting Out of Federal Law I: State Choice-of-Law Clauses
Most provisions of federal law are mandatory. One cannot opt out of the tax code, the wire fraud statute, or civil rights laws. There are, however, a handful of federal laws that are not mandatory. These laws expressly state that they shall not apply if private actors write language into their contracts opting out. A…
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