Waiver

D.C. Circuit Limits Jurisdiction over Foreign States in Breach of Contract Claims

Two soldiers shaking hands, representing the business relationship between Iraq and military contractors

Circuit courts have split on the issue of what is required for a breach of contract to have a “direct effect” in the United States for the purposes of the Foreign Sovereign Immunity Act (FSIA) (a primer on foreign sovereign immunity is available here). Rulings in the Seventh and Eleventh Circuits impose a “place of…

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Throwback Thursday: Insurance Corp. of Ireland v. Compagnie des Bauxites

In the Supreme Court’s end-of-Term personal jurisdiction case, Mallory v. Norfolk Southern Railway (2023) (prior coverage here, here, and here), Justice Jackson wrote separately to explain why she found “particularly instructive” the Court’s prior decision in Insurance Corp. of Ireland v. Compagnie des Bauxites (1982). Bauxites, a case about jurisdictional discovery and discovery sanctions, is…

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Waiving Choice of Law

When I teach Conflict of Laws, I tell my students that they must always perform a choice-of-law analysis when there is a conflict between the laws of two jurisdictions. This is sound advice for doing well on the final exam. It is not, however, strictly true. In fact, litigants waive this issue all the time….

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New Scholarship on the Hague Service Convention

Thomas G. Vanderbeek recently published a note in the Vanderbilt Law Review that considers whether and to what extent parties should be permitted to “contract around” the Hague Service Convention (HSC). The conventional wisdom holds that the best way to avoid the HSC is to appoint a local agent to receive service of process. Once…

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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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Throwback Thursday: Canada, Cannabis, and Forum Selection Clauses

Companies engaged in transnational litigation prefer, as a rule, to litigate disputes at home. Litigating at home allows a party to rely on lawyers and procedures with which it is already familiar. It also forces the other party to bear the costs of litigating in an unfamiliar legal system and (sometimes) in a foreign language….

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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

Zachary D. Clopton

Northwestern Pritzker School of Law
zclopton@law.northwestern.eduEmail

Luana Matoso

Max Planck Institute for Comparative and International Private Law
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Curtis A. Bradley

University of Chicago Law School
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Pamela K. Bookman

Fordham University School of Law
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Matthew Salavitch

Fordham Law School
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Hannah Buxbaum

Indiana University Maurer School of Law
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Paul B. Stephan

University of Virginia School of Law
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Noah Buyon

Duke University School of Law
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Naman Karl-Thomas Habtom

University of Cambridge
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Ben Köhler

Max Planck Institute for Comparative and International Private Law
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Melissa Stewart

University of Hawai'i, William S. Richardson School of Law.
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Ian M. Kysel

Cornell Law School
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