Arbitration Enforcement and Consent
This Term, the Supreme Court will hear a case that could have profound ramifications for international arbitration: CC/Devas (Mauritius) Ltd. v. Antrix Corp. Ltd. The petitioners are seeking to enforce an arbitration award they won against a state-owned company in India. The district court enforced the award, relying on the New York Convention and the…
Continue ReadingTransnational Litigation at the Supreme Court, October Term 2024
Today is the first day of the Supreme Court’s October Term. This post briefly discusses four transnational litigation cases in which the Court has already granted cert, as well as several others that are in the pipeline and could be decided this Term. Readers can also consult our Supreme Court page. Cases in which the…
Continue ReadingSystemic Due Process and the Hague Judgments Convention
The State Department is exploring ratification of the Hague Judgments Convention (HJC) and Convention on Choice of Court Agreements (COCA). It has announced a meeting of the Advisory Committee on Private International Law for October 24-25 to discuss these conventions (as well as the Singapore Convention on mediation) and how they might be implemented. As…
Continue ReadingChinese Judgments and Due Process: Another New York Decision
In the United States, the recognition and enforcement of foreign judgments are generally governed by state law. Thirty-eight states and the District of Columbia have adopted either the 1962 Uniform Foreign Money Judgments Recognition Act or the updated 2005 Uniform Foreign Country Money Judgments Recognition Act. (In the remaining twelve states, common law governs.) Both…
Continue Reading11th Circuit Enjoins Enforcement of Florida Statute on Alien Ownership of Property
Foreign ownership of agricultural property in the United States has become more common over the past decades, leading to increased efforts to limit the practice. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit is currently waiting to hear oral arguments in Shen v. Simpson a challenge to a Florida statute (SB 264) that restricts…
Continue ReadingNinth Circuit Gets Tangled Up in Minimum Contacts and Due Process
Do the Fifth Amendment’s due process protections require minimum contacts? And do those protections apply to foreign states sued under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (FSIA)? Those are the fundamental questions on which Ninth Circuit judges offered differing approaches as they resolved a recent petition for rehearing en banc. Regular TLB readers may recall that…
Continue ReadingCase Brought by Jamal Khashoggi’s Widow Dismissed
Hanan Elatr Khashoggi sued Israeli spyware companies in connection with the death of her husband, journalist Jamal Khashoggi. A critic of the Saudi government, Khashoggi was killed in Istanbul, Turkey at the Saudi Arabian consulate. Last year, Judge John Bates (D.D.C.) dismissed a civil suit against Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman on grounds of…
Continue ReadingCourt Rejects Challenge to OFAC Blocking Order
Sanctions are an increasingly important part of United States foreign policy, and cases challenging them are also of growing significance. Sanctioned entities face an uphill battle in court however, as illustrated by a recent decision from the Southern District of New York: Rusaviainvest, OOO v. Yellen. Rusaviainvest, OOO (the plaintiffs) challenged an order by the…
Continue ReadingConstitutional Issues in the Sudan Claims Resolution Act
District courts and the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia have recently issued opinions addressing constitutional issues in litigation against Sudan. The United States and the Republic of Sudan signed an agreement (the Claims and Dispute Resolution Agreement) designed to improve diplomatic relations between the two countries, to promote democracy in Sudan, and…
Continue ReadingA Primer on Foreign State Compulsion
Foreign state compulsion (also called foreign sovereign compulsion) is a doctrine allowing a U.S. court to excuse violations of U.S. law or moderate the sanctions imposed for such violations on the ground that they are compelled by foreign law. The doctrine arises most often when foreign law blocks compliance with U.S. discovery requests and in…
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