Systemic 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 ReadingReciprocity and the Hague Judgments Convention
In a prior post, I reported on recent developments that offer a basis for (cautious) optimism that the United States may soon take the necessary steps to ratify the Hague Judgments Convention (HJC). In this post, I explore how the issue of reciprocity might affect the ratification process. Reciprocity Reciprocity refers to the mutual recognition…
Continue ReadingHow (Not) to Decide Whether a Foreign Judgment Is Preclusive
Foreign judgments are generally entitled to recognition in the United States. Beneath that simple statement, however, lie many complexities. When lawyers and judges do not understand those complexities, they are likely to go astray. That seems to be what happened in Wash v. Finch, a recent federal decision in the District of New Jersey. This…
Continue ReadingD.C. Circuit Rejects FSIA Waiver Exception to Uphold Immunity of Sovereign-Owned Property
In a recent decision, Bainbridge Fund Ltd. v. Republic of Argentina, the D.C. Circuit rejected a judgment creditor’s attempt to attach and execute upon the Chancery Annex, a building owned by Argentina in Washington, D.C. Argentina’s creditors have chased it for two decades, since the beginning of its sovereign debt crisis, to varying degrees of…
Continue ReadingRecent Developments Concerning the Hague Judgments Convention and COCA
Although the United States signed Hague Convention on Choice of Court Agreements (COCA) in 2009, it has yet to ratify it. In this post, I report on some recent developments that offer a basis for (cautious) optimism that the United States may soon take the necessary steps to ratify both COCA and the Hague Judgments…
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 ReadingChoice of Law in the American Courts in 2023
The thirty-seventh annual survey on choice of law in the American courts is now available on SSRN. The survey covers significant cases decided in 2023 on choice of law, party autonomy, extraterritoriality, international human rights, foreign sovereign immunity, adjudicative jurisdiction, and the recognition and enforcement of foreign judgments. So, on this leap day, we thought…
Continue ReadingDomestic Litigation and Compensation to Ukrainian Victims of Russian Aggression
Many proposals to compensate Ukrainian victims of Russian aggression do not directly involve domestic courts, in part because foreign sovereign immunity poses significant obstacles to such litigation. There are, however, important cases against Russia currently pending in Ukrainian courts. These cases were the subject of a recent session held in Lviv, Ukraine, as part of…
Continue ReadingMDL-ing Transnational Litigation
What happens when the tax authority of the Kingdom of Denmark believes it was defrauded by more than 150 pension plans across the United States? A multidistrict litigation! This post briefly summarizes an unusual litigation in the Southern District of New York captioned In re SKAT Tax Refund Scheme Litigation. The post begins with a…
Continue ReadingInternational Custody Jurisdiction, Human Rights, and Legislative Change
The Court of Appeals of Washington State recently issued an unpublished opinion that will serve as a benchmark for parents who flee certain countries with their children, seeking safe harbor in the United States (In re AlHaidari (Fearing, CJ)). In re AlHaidari Bethany AlHaidari, a U.S. citizen, married Ghassan AlHaidari, a Saudi citizen, in Saudi…
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