Modernizing Foreign Judgments Law
In 1895, the Supreme Court decided Hilton v. Guyot, the foundational case on foreign judgments law. The underlying lawsuit was straightforward. Two American entrepreneurs were sued in Paris by their French business associates in connection with a commercial dispute that occurred in France. When the plaintiffs prevailed, they brought their French money judgment to U.S….
Continue ReadingNew Paper on Currency-Based Jurisdiction in U.S. Sanctions Enforcement
Customary international law limits the authority of nations to regulate extraterritorially. As described in TLB’s Primer on Extraterritoriality, a nation may exercise jurisdiction to prescribe if there is a “genuine connection” between that nation and what it wants to regulate. Customary international law limits on jurisdiction to prescribe apply to sanctions programs no less than…
Continue ReadingNew Article on the Determination and Treatment of Foreign Law in U.S. Courts
Professor Chris Whytock, who is an Associate Reporter for the ALI’s Restatement (Third) of Conflict of Laws, has just posted an article on SSRN outlining the Restatement’s approach to determining the content and meaning of foreign law. As he notes, this is a perennial challenge in transnational as well as multistate litigation. Like choice-of-law rules,…
Continue ReadingNew Essay on the Future of Fuld v. PLO
I have expanded on my prior TLB posts on Fuld v. PLO, including a series of posts I wrote last summer critiquing the originalist case for unlimited personal jurisdiction under the Fifth Amendment, in a new essay that is forthcoming in the Yale Law Journal Forum and is now available on SSRN. In this new…
Continue ReadingBook Launch for Hague Convention on Choice of Court Agreements
The 2005 Hague Convention on Choice of Court Agreements entered into force ten years ago. As regular readers will know, the United States has signed but not (yet) ratified the Convention. Were the United States to do so, it would mark a significant (and positive) change in the U.S. approach to the interpretation and enforcement…
Continue ReadingScholarship Critical of “Schedule A” Cases
A growing chorus of scholarly concern about “Schedule A” cases appears to be catching the attention of some district courts. In a “Schedule A” case, a holder of U.S. intellectual property rights will sue a large collection of defendants, often online merchants based outside of the United States, which it will list in a “Schedule…
Continue ReadingInteresting Papers at the ASIL Midyear Meeting, Sept. 26-27
The American Society of International Law is holding its midyear meeting in Cleveland, Ohio on September 26-27, 2025. The midyear meeting includes research fora that focus on draft papers selected through an open, competitive submission process. Several selected papers may be of interest to TLB readers, including: Challenging National Security List Designations in U.S. Courts…
Continue ReadingNew Paper on Extraterritorial Application of the Wire Fraud Statute
I have written before about a circuit split over when the federal wire fraud statute applies extraterritorially. The lower federal courts disagree about how much use of U.S. wires is required to make an application of the statute “domestic.” The Second Circuit has held that use of U.S. wires must be a “core component” of…
Continue ReadingRecent Scholarship on Sovereign Immunity from Executive Measures
Immunity protects the assets of foreign sovereigns from the jurisdiction of domestic courts. Customary international law requires such immunity, which is also conferred in the United States by the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (FSIA). An important question about sovereign immunity is whether it also protects the assets of foreign sovereigns from executive branch or administrative…
Continue ReadingWhy Canada’s Terrorism Exception Does Not Violate International Law
Like the United States, Canada has an exception in its State Immunity Act (SIA) for state supporters of terrorism. Canada has put Iran and Syria on the list of states against which claims for terrorism may be brought in Canadian courts. Under the SIA, Canadian courts have found Iran liable for shooting down a Ukraine…
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