Throwback Thursday: John Henry Merryman on the Civil Law Tradition
Transnational litigation is situated at the intersection of many areas of law, including comparative law. This Throwback Thursday focuses on one of the great works of comparative law, The Civil Law Tradition: An Introduction to the Legal Systems of Western Europe and Latin America by John Henry Merryman. The slim volume can almost get lost…
Continue ReadingUsing TLB To Teach Transnational Litigation
One of our goals in creating TLB was to compile a set of educational resources for students and teachers. As we gear up for a new academic year, we will be running a series of posts highlighting TLB content that may be useful to professors of Civil Procedure, Foreign Relations Law, International Business Transactions (IBT),…
Continue ReadingThe Political Question Doctrine in the Lower Courts
Curt Bradley and Eric Posner have posted to SSRN a fascinating new paper about the political question doctrine. In The Real Political Question Doctrine, they take an empirical look at cases applying the doctrine in the lower federal courts since the Supreme Court’s 1962 decision in Baker v. Carr. Among other things, they find that…
Continue ReadingNew Scholarship on the Argentinian Sovereign Debt Litigation
For more than a decade in the early 00s, Argentina’s $100 billion sovereign debt default dominated the transnational litigation news headlines – and, indeed, global financial news. Hundreds of cases were filed against Argentina in U.S. courts with long-term implications for foreign sovereign immunity and foreign direct investment. Many of those cases were consolidated before…
Continue ReadingSupreme Court Round-Up, OT 2021
Transnational litigation has been a persistent, if small, part of the Supreme Court’s docket in the Roberts Court. With the Supreme Court now on its summer break, here is a summary of TLB’s coverage of October Term 2021 cases, which included important decisions on choice of law and federalism and on discovery for use in…
Continue ReadingThe Case of the Missing U.S. Judges: Traveling Judges on International Commercial Courts
In March, two sitting UK Supreme Court justices resigned from the Hong Kong Court of Appeals, citing the 2020 National Security Law, which had made their continued presence politically difficult for the UK government. Hong Kong’s highest court was established in 1997 to reassure foreign interests about the continuity of the common law and the…
Continue ReadingThrowback Thursday: The Ottoman Empire, the Capitulations, and War
Yes, the “capitulations” are often the stuff of very old books, the kind of books frequently discarded, the ones that you see heaped up sadly on the sidewalk in the rain next to libraries making space for people to surf the internet. Books, that is, like Nasim Sousa’s, The Capitulatory Regime of Turkey: Its History,…
Continue ReadingUkraine in U.S. Courts
Though far from its most significant impact, the conflict in the Ukraine has implications for litigation in the United States. Unsurprisingly, the Government of Ukraine has sought to pause ongoing litigation in light of the current hostilities. Such filings could provide insight into how the Government Ukraine seeks to characterize those events.
Continue ReadingWhytock Challenges the Conventional Wisdom that Transnational Forum Shopping Is Increasing in U.S. Courts
In a recent article, Professor Chris Whytock challenges the claim that transnational forum shopping by foreign plaintiffs is increasing. Using data on approximately 8 million civil actions filed in federal court, Whytock shows that transnational diversity cases represent a small and decreasing percentage of overall litigation.
Continue ReadingWhy Transnational Litigation?
The justiciability of Holocaust expropriation claims; treaty interpretation in international custody disputes; the adequacy of pleading the enslavement of children; accessing U.S. discovery for international arbitration; the availability of punitive damages for international terrorism; the immunity of international organizations before U.S. courts; how to serve process on a foreign state: The U.S. Supreme Court has…
Continue Reading