The Sovereignty of Personal Jurisdiction

DRAFT available upon request

2024

Abstract: The debate over whether constitutional limits on state courts’ exercise of personal jurisdiction are grounded in sovereignty or liberty has haunted civil litigation in the United States for decades, but this Article proposes a way out. Commentators have tracked the Supreme Court’s fluctuation between the two justifications, even or...
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Sovereignty as Illegality

DRAFT available upon request

2024

Abstract: Current U.S. foreign sovereign immunity doctrine makes a mess of sovereignty. In the ways they classify certain conduct as sovereign, the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (FSIA) and associated case law paint a troubling image of sovereignty. This image of sovereignty appears to entail the right to abuse lawful authority...
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Procedural Sovereign Distinction

57 Vand. J. Transnat'l L. 469

2024
link / pdf

Abstract: U.S. law differentiates between two categories of foreign defendants—sovereign and private. On one level, whether a foreign entity is sovereign determines whether they are presumptively entitled to immunity in domestic courts, and this is justified by the nature of sovereignty as articulated in U.S. and international law. However, different...
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Russia Continues Pressing Sovereignty Claims in the Yukos Award Saga

Transnational Litigation Blog

January 25, 2024
link

Abstract: Yukos Oil Company (“Yukos”) shareholders’ attempts to enforce their $50 billion arbitral award against the Russian Federation are moving forward in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. On November 17, 2023, Judge Beryl Howell denied Russia’s motion to dismiss the case for lack of subject matter...
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Missouri’s COVID Suit Against China Revived

Transnational Litigation Blog

January 17, 2024
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Abstract: The Eighth Circuit has breathed life back into Missouri’s attempts to hold the People’s Republic of China (PRC) responsible in U.S. court for the COVID-19 pandemic. Missouri filed this claim in April 2020 and, as Chimène Keitner outlined at the time, the case is rife with Foreign Sovereign Immunities...
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Impossible Commands: Hobbes and Spinoza on Law, Rights, and Resistance

DRAFT available upon request

2023

Abstract: What should we make of would-be laws or sovereign commands that require an individual to violate their essential human nature? The answers that Hobbes and Spinoza offer to this question shed light both on individuals’ obligations and orientation to the civil state, and on the relationship between these two...
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North Sea Continental Shelf Cases

The Global Encyclopedia of Territorial Rights

2022
link / pdf

Abstract: This encyclopedia entry describes and analyzes the North Sea Continental Shelf Cases, a 1969 judgment of the International Court of Justice regarding the international law principles applicable to delimitation of the North Sea continental shelf between three adjacent States. The Court held coastal States have an inherent right to...
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Citizens in Chains: Hobbes, State Violence, and the Right of Resistance

DRAFT available upon request

2021

Abstract: The phenomenon of states committing violence against their own citizens, the most dramatic expression of which is genocide, challenges us to consider what obedience citizens owe the sovereign, if any, under such circumstances. What becomes of the sovereign’s commands? What becomes of law?
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Pompeo’s Personal Stake in the International Criminal Court’s Afghan Investigation (with Randle DeFalco)

Just Security

June 3, 2020
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Abstract: It is no secret that the Trump administration, in general, and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, specifically, are hostile toward the International Criminal Court (ICC), particularly as it relates to the ICC’s investigation into potential U.S. abuses in Afghanistan since 2003. The Obama administration also resisted the Court’s veering...
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Historic Condemnation of the Destruction of Cultural Heritage at the International Criminal Court: The Case of Prosecutor v. Ahmad Al Faqi Al Mahdi

ABA Art & Cultural Heritage Law Newsletter

2017
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Abstract: “Justice did not tremble,” reported French newspaper Le Monde on September 29, 2016, describing the conclusion of this historic case at the International Criminal Court (ICC). Prosecutor v. Al Mahdi was replete with “firsts” for the Court: first prosecution for destruction of cultural heritage; first prosecution of an Islamic...
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Will Russia Pay the Yukos Settlement?

Institute of Modern Russia

March 26, 2015
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Abstract: In July 2014, the Hague issued a ruling that the Russian government had wrongly seized the Yukos oil company from its shareholders and was required to pay restitution in the amount of $50 billion. The following February, Russia appealed the court decision. This article reviews the case, Russia’s arguments,...
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