Customary international law provides immunity to states from the jurisdiction of foreign national courts. The immunity extends to state agencies and to state-owned property, protecting them from adjudicatory jurisdiction and from enforcement measures. Foreign sovereign immunity has important exceptions, including for waiver, for some conduct or property related to commercial activity, and for some torts committed on the territory of the forum state. In the United States, all aspects of foreign sovereign immunity for cases in state or federal court are governed by a federal statute, the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act.
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,…
Continue ReadingWhen Are Frozen Assets “Blocked” Assets?
The U.S. government’s efforts to quash the attachment of Iranian assets by victims of state-sponsored terrorism have been rejected by the D.C. Circuit. In Estate of Levin v. Wells Fargo Bank, N.A., the court of appeals reversed Judge Boasberg’s decision in favor of the government, and apparently created a split with the Fifth and Seventh…
Continue ReadingU.S. Covid Lawsuits Against China
[This post is based on a keynote address delivered at a webinar on “Law Across Borders” hosted by the Chinese Journal of Transnational Law on October 16, 2025.] At a conference at Wuhan University two years ago, I provided a U.S. perspective on China’s new Foreign State Immunity Law. By passing this law, China adopted…
Continue ReadingThe New State Capitalism and Foreign Sovereign Immunity
As governments play an increasingly aggressive and direct role in capitalist economic systems (the “new state capitalism”), the line between sovereign and commercial conduct may become more difficult to draw for the purposes of foreign sovereign immunity. For example, Switzerland acted in some ways like a private investment bank when it negotiated a 2023 deal…
Continue Reading