Recent Cases

Federal Court Enjoins New Jersey Statute Sanctioning Russia

Following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, New Jersey enacted a statute (the “Russia Act”) prohibiting state agencies and political subdivisions from doing business with entities engaged in “prohibited activities” in Russia. In Kyocera Document Sols. Am., Inc. v. Div. of Admin., district court judge Robert H. Kirsch held that the statute is preempted…

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International Law and Insurance Litigation: Interpreting War Exclusions

Litigation over the scope of insurance coverage often follows major business losses. Disputes are generally governed by applicable contract law. In two noteworthy cases, the parties turned to international lawyers to help shed light on the terms of their agreement. Both cases arose from the denial of insurance claims for business losses incurred as a…

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D.C. Circuit Defines “Venture” Under the TVPRA

On March 5, 2024, the D.C. Circuit issued its long-awaited opinion in Doe v. Apple, a suit against U.S. tech companies seeking to hold them liable under the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act (TVPRA) for forced labor and human trafficking used to mine cobalt in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). (Disclosure: I joined…

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Ninth Circuit Creates Split on Serving Motion to Confirm Arbitration Award

How does one serve process to confirm an arbitral award on parties outside the United States? The answer turns out to be quite complicated. In Voltage Pictures LLC v. Gussi S.A. de C.V., the Ninth Circuit charted a careful path through the maze of interactions between the Federal Arbitration Act (“FAA”) and the Federal Rules…

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Second Circuit Hears Halkbank Oral Argument

On February 28, 2024, the Second Circuit heard oral argument in United States v. Turkiye Halk Bankasi A.S. From the judges’ questions—which admittedly came almost exclusively from Judge Bianco—the panel seems likely to hold that Halkbank, a Turkish state-owned bank, is not immune under federal common law from criminal prosecution for violating U.S. sanctions on Iran. That…

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What Does Customary International Law Say About Halkbank’s Immunity?

Tomorrow, the Second Circuit will hear argument in United States v. Turkiye Halk Bankasi A.S. to consider whether Halkbank, a Turkish state-owned bank (but not its central bank), is immune from criminal prosecution for violating U.S. sanctions on Iran. Halkbank claimed immunity under both the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (FSIA) and federal common law. The U.S….

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Mexico’s Lawsuit against U.S. Gun Makers Opens a New Front in the War Against Firearm Industry Immunity

In 2021, the Government of Mexico filed a lawsuit against U.S. firearm manufacturers demanding $10 billion in damages for the industry’s role in facilitating illegal cross-border gun trafficking and seeking injunctive relief to change the way gun makers do business. Mexico’s lawsuit had to confront the industry’s notorious federal immunity shield—the Protection of Lawful Commerce…

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What Does the State Department Think About the Transit Pipelines Treaty?

On February 8, 2024, the Seventh Circuit heard argument in Bad River Band v. Enbridge Energy Co. Enbridge, a Canadian company, owns and operates a pipeline that transports light crude oil and natural gas liquids from Canadian oil fields to the United States and Ontario. The Bad River Band of Chippewa Indians sued Enbridge for…

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Ninth 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…

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The Extraterritorial Reach of Criminal Statutes

When federal statutes do not indicate how far they reach, courts apply a presumption against extraterritoriality to limit their geographic scope. Last year, in Abitron Austria GmbH v. Hetronic International, Inc. (2023), the Supreme Court revised the presumption by requiring conduct in the United States for a statute’s application to be considered domestic. Meanwhile, lower courts…

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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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