Supreme Court

Supreme Court decides Yegiazaryan v. Smagin

The Supreme Court just released its opinion in Yegiazaryan v. Smagin.   For prior coverage on TLB by Bill Dodge see here, here, here, and here. The issue in the case was whether the plaintiff adequately plead a domestic injury under RICO.  The foreign plaintiff alleged that the defendants worked together illegally to frustrate his collection…

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Their Beef Is with Burger King

The Justices have not yet given us good reasons to give up on International Shoe. Instead, their complaints are really about the doctrinal scaffolding that the Burger and Rehnquist Courts built on top of International Shoe in the 1980s.

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Supreme Court Finds Tech Companies Not Liable for Terrorism

Last week, the Supreme Court decided two cases in which plaintiffs alleged that social media companies aided and abetted international terrorism. In the first case, Twitter, Inc. v. Taamneh, the Justices unanimous interpreted the Antiterrorism Act’s (ATA) provision on aiding and abetting to require conscious and culpable participation. Plaintiffs’ allegations that ISIS used defendants’ social…

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Supreme Court Decides Twitter and Google Cases

The Supreme Court issued opinions this morning in Twitter, Inc. v. Taamneh and Golzalez v. Google LLC. It held that the plaintiffs’ allegations that these social media companies had aided and abetted ISIS in terrorist attacks abroad failed to state a claim under the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act. More coverage soon on TLB.

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Waiting for Mallory

The Supreme Court’s recent dormant Commerce Clause decision may shed light on how the Justices are thinking about Mallory v. Norfolk Southern.

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Dear Justice Gorsuch: There’s No Reason to Worry About the Remand in Halkbank

In Turkiye Halk Bankasi A.S. v. United States (Halkbank), the Supreme Court held that the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (FSIA) does not apply to criminal proceedings. The Court remanded the case to the Second Circuit to reconsider Halkbank’s claim of common law immunity. Justice Gorsuch, joined by Justice Alito, wrote a partial dissent. He would…

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Supreme Court Oral Argument in Extraterritorial RICO Case Marked by Confusion

The Supreme Court heard oral argument last week in Yegiazaryan v. Smagin and CMB Monaco v. Smagin, two cases testing when civil RICO can be used to help enforce a foreign arbitration award. Because I have described the facts in a previous post, I will be brief here. Smagin and Yegiazaryan are Russian citizens who…

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Open Questions after Halkbank

The Supreme Court held this week in Türkiye Halk Bankasi, A.S. v. United States that the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (FSIA) does not apply to criminal prosecutions. That holding was a blow to Halkbank—a foreign state-owned enterprise under indictment—which had argued that the FSIA provided it with immunity. But the case is not over. The…

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Throwback Thursday: Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum Co.

Ten years ago this week, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its decision in Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum Co., applying the presumption against extraterritoriality to the implied cause of action for human rights violations under the Alien Tort Statute (ATS). In Kiobel, the Court began to whittle down the cause of action it had…

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Preview of Supreme Court Argument in Civil RICO Extraterritoriality Case

On April 25, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral argument in Yegiazaryan v. Smagin and CMB Monaco v. Smagin, which ask how RICO’s private right of action applies to intangible property, in this case a California judgment confirming a foreign arbitral award. The cases have important implications not just for civil RICO but also for international arbitration….

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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

Gregg Cashmark

Vanderbilt Law School
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Hannah Buxbaum

Indiana University Maurer School of Law
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Symeon Symeonides

Willamette University College of Law
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Aaron D. Simowitz

Willamette University College of Law
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John B. Bellinger

Arnold & Porter LLP
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R. Reeves Anderson

Arnold & Porter LLP
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Volodymyr Ponomarov

Arnold & Porter LLP
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Robin Effron

Brooklyn Law School
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Scott Dodson

UC Law – San Francisco
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Paul MacMahon

LSE Law School
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