Foreign Sovereign Immunity

D.C. Circuit Addresses FSIA in Hungarian Art Case

Last month, the D.C. Circuit addressed several important questions under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (FSIA) in its latest decision in De Csepel v. Republic of Hungary, a long-running suit to recover art expropriated during the Second World War. The court held that the defendant Hungarian National Asset Management Inc. (MNV) was subject to jurisdiction…

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Jam v. IFC: Secondary Liability in Transnational Disputes

Later this month, the U.S. Supreme Court will consider a petition for a writ of certiorari in Jam v. International Finance Corp., a case that raises important questions about United States jurisdiction over cross-border disputes.  The case most immediately involves the scope of sovereign immunity where a foreign state or international organization takes actions in the United States that contribute to tortious conduct overseas.  But the case also has broader implications for secondary liability generally.

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Foreign Dictators in U.S. Courts

Statues of dictators

From Augusto Pinochet to Jiang Zemin and Ferdinand Marcos, foreign dictators have for decades faced a range of claims in U.S. courts. But there is also a line of cases in U.S. courts involving dictators as plaintiffs. Over the last decade, authoritarian governments from China, Russia, Turkey, and Venezuela have used the U.S. judicial system to file frivolous claims against political opponents. And these claims appear to be mainly a harassment technique against dissidents and media outlets based in the United States.

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Ingrid (Wuerth) Brunk

Vanderbilt Law School
ingrid.brunk@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

Hannah Buxbaum

UC Davis School of Law
hbuxbaum@ucdavis.eduEmail

Yanbai Andrea Wang

University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School
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Natalie Reid

Debevoise & Plimpton LLP
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Beatrice Walton

Debevoise & Plimpton LLP
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Rinat Gareev

Whitecliff Management
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Harold Hongju Koh

Yale Law School
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