William S. Dodge

TLB’s Top Ten Posts in 2022

As 2022 draws to a close, so too does the first year for TLB. We began blogging in late March. Since then, we have published nearly two hundred posts by more than fifty authors. Here are TLB’s top ten posts, by number of views, in 2022. (1) Maggie Gardner, U.S. Courts Gut Key Provision of…

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Oral Argument in Doe v. Apple

Last week, the D.C. Circuit heard oral argument in Doe v. Apple, a case brought by victims of forced labor and human trafficking against five U.S. technology companies. The plaintiffs are children or family members of children who were injured or killed mining cobalt in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The defendants—Apple, Alphabet, Microsoft,…

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District Court Dismisses Killing Claims Against MBS

Yesterday, the District Court for the District of Columbia (Judge John Bates) dismissed a lawsuit brought by Democracy in the Arab World Now (DAWN) and the widow of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who was brutally murdered by security agents at the Saudi embassy in Istanbul. The plaintiffs sued Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) and…

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The FSIA “Two Step”—Venue in Enforcement Actions Against Foreign States

When a party holding a foreign judgment or arbitral award wants to enforce the judgment or award against assets in the United States, it normally brings an enforcement action in the jurisdiction where the assets are located. But when the judgment debtor is a foreign state, the venue provision of the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act…

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The Executive Does Not Control Common Law Immunity

A previously reported on TLB, the Supreme Court granted certiorari in Türkiye Halk Bankasi, A.S. v. United States, to decide whether a bank owned by Turkey is entitled to foreign state immunity from federal criminal prosecution.  Halkbank was indicted for evading sanctions against Iran. Both lower courts denied immunity to Halkbank, reasoning in part that…

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Solicitor General Recommends Denial of Cert in NSO v. WhatsApp

On November 21, the Solicitor General (SG) filed a brief recommending that the Supreme Court deny cert in NSO Group Technologies Ltd. v. WhatsApp Inc. NSO, an Israeli company that makes surveillance technology, claims that it is entitled to immunity from suit under federal common law because it acted as the agent of foreign states….

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A Century of Changes in Extraterritoriality

This post is a lightly edited version of a talk given virtually on November 26, 2022, at the “International Symposium on Accelerating Changes Unseen in a Century and the Development of International Law” organized by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Institute of International Law. I am pleased to be with you today to discuss…

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State Department Recognizes Head-of-State Immunity for MBS

Earlier today, the U.S. State Department recognized that Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman (MBS) is entitled to head-of-state immunity as Prime Minister of Saudi Arabia in a case brought by Democracy in the Arab World Now (DAWN) and the widow of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who was brutally murdered by Saudi security agents at the Saudi…

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Throwback Thursday: United States v. Bowman

One hundred years ago, on November 13, 1922, Chief Justice William Howard Taft delivered the Supreme Court’s decision in United States v. Bowman, holding that a federal statute that made it a criminal offense to conspire to defraud a corporation owned by U.S. government applied extraterritorially to conduct on the high seas and in Brazil….

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Supreme Court to Decide Extraterritorial Reach of Trademark Statute

Today the Supreme Court granted review in Abitron Austria GmbH v. Hetronic International, Inc. to consider when the federal trademark statute, known as the Lanham Act, applies extraterritorially. In Steele v. Bulova Watch (1952), the Court held that the act applied extraterritorially to the infringement of a U.S. trademark in Mexico. But lower courts have developed different tests for implementing Steele, creating a…

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Ingrid (Wuerth) Brunk

Vanderbilt Law School
ingrid.wuerth@vanderbilt.eduEmail

William Dodge

George Washington University Law School
william.dodge@law.gwu.eduEmail

Maggie Gardner

Cornell Law School
mgardner@cornell.eduEmail

John F. Coyle

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

León Castellanos-Jankiewicz

Institute for International and European Law
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Paul B. Stephan

University of Virginia School of Law
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Robin Effron

Brooklyn Law School
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Maryam Jamshidi

University of Colorado Law School
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Fikri Soral

Galatasaray University
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Gregg Cashmark

Vanderbilt Law School
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Hannah Buxbaum

Indiana University Maurer School of Law
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Symeon Symeonides

Willamette University College of Law
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Aaron D. Simowitz

Willamette University College of Law
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John B. Bellinger

Arnold & Porter LLP
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R. Reeves Anderson

Arnold & Porter LLP
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Volodymyr Ponomarov

Arnold & Porter LLP
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