Wells Fargo Asia Ltd. v. Citibank, N.A. Trinh v. Citibank, N.A. Edelmann v. Chase Manhattan Bank, N.A.

1989 ◽  
Vol 83 (3) ◽  
pp. 573-580 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert J. Dilworth

In these three breach-of-contract actions, United States federal courts considered the liability of home offices of U.S. banks for obligations of their foreign branches in the event of foreign governmental expropriation or exchange control measures. In each decision the court of appeals did not apply the act of state doctrine and gave no effect to the foreign governmental action, largely on the ground either that the situs of the debt was not within the exclusive jurisdiction of the foreign state carrying out the governmental measure at issue or that the law governing the obligation was not that of the foreign state.

1981 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 161-170

In enacting section 1605(a)(1) of the FSIA, Congress manifestly intended that an arbitration agreement should constitute a waiver of foreign sovereign immunity. The legislative history expressly mentions as examples of implicit waivers “cases where a foreign state has agreed to arbitration in another country or where a foreign state has agreed that the law of a particular country should govern a contract.” H. Rep. No. 94-1487 at 18. To date, only one other court has had occasion to interpret and apply the waiver provision of section 1605(a)(1) with respect to the enforcement of foreign judgments, and it reached the same result as the court below, viz., that an agreement to arbitrate in a third country constitutes a waiver of foreign sovereign immunity.


Author(s):  
Lloyd C. Anderson

 People negotiate agreements "in the shadow of the law," whether in the private ordering of affairs such as drafting contracts or in the public forum of settling lawsuits.[1] A reverse phenomenon, however, has gone largely unnoticed: judges occasionally declare law in the shadow of negotiated settlements. In interpreting the terms of a consent decree[2] when the parties themselves cannot agree on what obligations such terms impose, the judge may determine that both the words and the parties' own intentions are so ambiguous that the words must be interpreted in light of the substantive law that gave rise to the plaintiffs' claim. This writer has previously contended that the meaning of an ambiguous term should be determined, in part, "by reference to the constitutional or statutory rights sought to be vindicated in the litigation." Even if the law is somewhat uncertain, part of the judge's interpretive effort should be to determine which interpretation "will best serve the policies of the relevant law."[3] It appears that the federal courts, at least, have adopted this position.[4]


Author(s):  
Julius Henry Cohen ◽  
Kenneth Dayton

This article focuses on the federal arbitration law. On February 12, 1925, President Calvin Coolidge signed the United States Arbitration Law, which became effective on January 1, 1926. This act reversed the hoary doctrine that agreements for arbitration are revocable at will and are unenforceable, and in the language of the statute itself, they are made “valid, enforceable and irrevocable” within the limits of federal jurisdiction. There are three evils which arbitration is intended to correct: (1) the long delay usually incident to a proceeding at law, in equity or in admiralty, especially in recent years in centers of commercial activity, where there has arisen great congestion of the court calendars; (2) the expense of litigation; and (3) the failure, through litigation, to reach a decision regarded as just when measured by the standards of the business world. The article then argues that the proposed law rests upon the constitutional provision by which Congress is authorized to establish and control inferior federal courts. It also contends that sound public policy demands specific enforcement of arbitration agreements by the law.


2013 ◽  
Vol 107 (3) ◽  
pp. 644-649 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eugene Kontorovich

In the first criminal piracy decision by a United States court in nearly a century, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit ruled that the federal piracy statute’s reference to the “law of nations” explicitly ties the scope of the offense to evolving customary international law definitions of the crime. The court went on to find that under current customary and treaty law, attempted piracy falls within the scope of the international crime. In doing so, it joined several courts in nations around the world that have confronted the issue as a result of the outbreak of Somali piracy that began in 2008.


Author(s):  
Nicholas Ravotti

The practice of law requires not only an understanding of the law itself (i.e., what the law “says”), but also the ability to conduct proper legal research to formulate cogent legal arguments in support of one's case. For attorneys practicing before state and federal courts in the United States, this is accomplished through the use of legal research databases that catalog and archive nearly all state and federal trial court and appellate court opinions. For attorneys who practice before the 573 federally-recognized Indian tribal courts, this task is far more complex. This chapter discusses the need for a culturally-appropriate legal research database to bridge the digital divide in tribal courts.


1984 ◽  
Vol 78 (4) ◽  
pp. 783-810 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karl M. Meessen

When, on October 24, 1983, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California handed down its decision in Timberlane Lumber Co. v. Bank of America and denied U.S. jurisdiction out of regard for the Honduran “system of justice,” there may have been some surprise that the case was still pending. The Timberlane decision of 1976 of the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, which remanded the matter to the district court, had already become a classic, even though it was preceded by the 1968 decision in United States v. First National City Bank on the production of documents located abroad. The Timberlane approach outlined by Judge Choy, under which the exercise of antitrust jurisdiction has to be restrained by a case-by-case analysis of various factors, was widely discussed (and usually praised) in legal writing, and was also followed by federal courts of the Second, Third, Fifth, Ninth and Tenth Circuits.


1931 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 83-96
Author(s):  
A. H. Feller

To the ever-increasing confusion of doctrine which makes up the law of sovereign immunity, the courts of the United States have added procedural complications which, though not as weighty, are nevertheless as puzzling as any of the substantive rules. Of recent years the United States Supreme Court and the lower Federal courts have often had occasion to consider the method whereby the question of immunity was raised. The result has been the evolution of a set of rules so vaguely defined in the decisions as to offer little guidance to the bench and bar, and withal of interest to the scholar who finds that these rules exist in no other judicial system.


1989 ◽  
Vol 83 (4) ◽  
pp. 805-813 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan I. Charney

Disputes with foreign policy implications have often been brought to the federal courts. These cases call attention to the tension between the authority of the political branches to conduct the foreign relations of the United States and the authority of the courts to render judgments according to the law. How this tension is resolved, in turn, bears directly on the commitment of the United States to the rule of law.


2019 ◽  
Vol 180 ◽  
pp. 454-476

State immunity — Jurisdictional immunity — Employment — Foreign military base — United Kingdom national employed as civilian computer operator on United States military base in United Kingdom — State Immunity Act 1978 — Whether Section 16(2) applicable — Whether doctrine of restrictive immunity applicable under common law — Whether act de jure imperii or de jure gestionis — Whether contract kind that private individual could enter into — Whether performance of contract involving both parties in public functions of foreign State — Nature of breach of contract or other act of foreign State giving rise to proceedings — Whether investigation of claim involving investigation into public or sovereign acts of foreign State — Whether respondent entitled to immunity — The law of England


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