Sovereign immunity, or crown immunity, is a legal doctrine whereby a sovereign or state cannot commit a legal wrong and is immune from civil suit or criminal prosecution, strictly speaking in modern texts in its own courts. A similar, stronger rule as regards foreign courts is named state immunity.
The Eleventh Amendment is an amendment to the United States Constitution which was passed by Congress on March 4, 1794, and ratified by the states on February 7, 1795. The Eleventh Amendment restricts the ability of individuals to bring suit against states in federal court.
The Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act of 1976 (FSIA) is a United States law, codified at Title 28, §§ 1330, 1332, 1391(f), 1441(d), and 1602–1611 of the United States Code, that established criteria as to whether a foreign sovereign nation is immune from the jurisdiction of U.S. courts—federal or state. The Act also establishes specific procedures for service of process, attachment of property and execution of judgment in proceedings against a foreign state. The FSIA provides the exclusive basis and means to bring a civil suit against a foreign sovereign in the United States. It was signed into law by United States President Gerald Ford on October 21, 1976.
The doctrine and rules of state immunity concern the protection which a state is given from being sued in the courts of other states. The rules relate to legal proceedings in the courts of another state, not in a state's own courts. The rules developed at a time when it was thought to be an infringement of a state's sovereignty to bring proceedings against it or its officials in a foreign country.
Filártiga v. Peña-Irala, 630 F.2d 876, was a landmark case in United States and international law. It set the precedent for United States federal courts to punish non-American citizens for tortious acts committed outside the United States that were in violation of public international law or any treaties to which the United States is a party. It thus extends the jurisdiction of United States courts to tortious acts committed around the world. The case was decided by a panel of judges from the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit consisting of judges Wilfred Feinberg, Irving Kaufman, and Amalya Lyle Kearse.
Saudi Arabia v. Nelson, 507 U.S. 349 (1993), is a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court considered the term "based upon a commercial activity" within the meaning of the first clause of 1605(a)(2) of the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act of 1976.
Permanent Mission of India v. City of New York, 551 U.S. 193 (2007), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court construed the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act to allow a federal court to hear a lawsuit brought by the City of New York to recover unpaid property taxes levied against India and Mongolia, both of which own real estate in New York.
The National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2008 is a law in the United States signed by President George W. Bush on January 28, 2008. As a bill it was H.R. 4986 in the 110th Congress. The overall purpose of the law is to authorize funding for the defense of the United States and its interests abroad, for military construction, and for national security-related energy programs. In a controversial signing statement, President Bush instructed the executive branch to construe Sections 841, 846, 1079, and 1222 "in a manner consistent with the constitutional authority of the President".
In United States law, the federal government as well as state and tribal governments generally enjoy sovereign immunity, also known as governmental immunity, from lawsuits. Local governments in most jurisdictions enjoy immunity from some forms of suit, particularly in tort. The Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act provides foreign governments, including state-owned companies, with a related form of immunity—state immunity—that shields them from lawsuits except in relation to certain actions relating to commercial activity in the United States. The principle of sovereign immunity in US law was inherited from the English common law legal maxim rex non potest peccare, meaning "the king can do no wrong." In some situations, sovereign immunity may be waived by law.
The Torture Victim Protection Act of 1991 is a US statute that allows for the filing of civil suits in the United States against individuals who, acting in an official capacity for any foreign nation, committed torture and/or extrajudicial killing. The statute requires a plaintiff to show exhaustion of local remedies in the location of the crime, to the extent that such remedies are "adequate and available." Plaintiffs may be U.S. citizens or non-U.S. citizens.
Stephen Flatow is an American lawyer notable for initiating a series of lawsuits targeting the Islamic Republic of Iran and several international banks who processed transactions on Iran's behalf, which were linked to terrorist activities.
OBB Personenverkehr AG v. Sachs, 577 U.S. ___ (2015), is a decision by the Supreme Court of the United States, holding that the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act barred a California resident from bringing suit against an Austrian railroad in federal district court. The case arose after a California resident suffered traumatic personal injuries while attempting to board a train in Innsbruck, Austria. She then filed a lawsuit against the railroad in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California in which she alleged the railroad was responsible for causing her injuries. Because the railroad was owned by the Austrian government, the railroad claimed that the lawsuit should be barred by the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, which provides immunity to foreign sovereigns in tort suits filed in the United States. In response, the plaintiff argued that her suit should be permitted under the Foreign Sovereign Immunity Act's commercial activity exception because she purchased her rail ticket in the United States.
Bank Markazi v. Peterson, 578 U.S. ___ (2016), was a United States Supreme Court case that found that a law which only applied to a specific case, identified by docket number, and eliminated all of the defenses one party had raised does not violate the separation of powers in the United States Constitution between the legislative (Congress) and judicial branches of government. The plaintiffs, in the case had initially obtained judgments against Iran for its role in supporting state-sponsored terrorism, particularly the 1983 Beirut barracks bombings and 1996 Khobar Towers bombing, and sought execution against a bank account in New York held, through European intermediaries, on behalf of Bank Markazi, the Central Bank of the Islamic Republic of Iran. The plaintiffs obtained court orders preventing the transfer of funds from the account in 2008 and initiated their lawsuit in 2010. Bank Markazi raised several defenses, including that the account was not an asset of the bank, but rather an asset of its European intermediary, under both New York state property law and §201(a) of the Terrorism Risk Insurance Act. In response to concerns that existing laws were insufficient for the account to be used to settle the judgments, Congress added an amendment to a 2012 bill, codified after enactment as 22 U.S.C. § 8772, that identified the pending lawsuit by docket number, applied only to the assets in the identified case, and effectively abrogated every legal basis available to Bank Markazi to prevent the plaintiffs from executing their claims against the account. Bank Markazi then argued that § 8772 was an unconstitutional breach of the separation of power between the legislative and judicial branches of government, because it effectively directed a particular result in a single case without changing the generally applicable law. The United States District Court for the Southern District of New York and, on appeal, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit both upheld the constitutionality of § 8772 and cleared the way for the plaintiffs to execute their judgments against the account, which held about $1.75 billion in cash.
Rubin v. Islamic Republic of Iran, 583 U.S. ___ (2018), was a United States Supreme Court case brought against the nation of Iran by the families of American victims of the Ben Yehuda Street bombings which occurred in September 1997. Under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act of 1976, nations cannot typically be sued unless the state can be proved to have provided support for terrorists or acts of terrorism. After a district judge ruled Iran owed $71.5 million to the families of the victims, the families brought several cases to court in an attempt to attach and execute on assets owned by the state of Iran located in the United States.
The Flatow Amendment is an amendment to the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act of 1976 passed in 1996, which allows American victims of terrorism to sue countries that are designated as terrorism sponsors. The legislation establishes that foreign state sponsors of terrorism “shall be liable to a United States national … for personal injury or death caused by acts of that [party]….”
Republic of Sudan v. Harrison, 587 U.S. ___ (2019), was a United States Supreme Court case from the October 2018 term. The Court held that civil service of a lawsuit against the government of Sudan was invalid because the civil complaints and summons had been sent to the Embassy of Sudan in Washington, D.C. rather than to the Sudanese Foreign Minister in Khartoum.
Jam v. International Finance Corp., 586 U.S. ___ (2019), was a United States Supreme Court case from the October 2018 term. The Supreme Court ruled that international organizations, such as the World Bank Group's financing arm, the International Finance Corporation, can be sued in US federal courts for conduct arising from their commercial activities. It specifically held that international organizations shared the same sovereign immunity as foreign governments. This was a reversal from existing jurisprudence, which held that international organizations had near-absolute immunity from lawsuits under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act and the International Organizations Immunities Act.
Opati v. Republic of Sudan, 590 U.S. ___ (2020), was a United States Supreme Court case involving the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act with its 2008 amendments, whether plaintiffs in federal lawsuits against foreign countries may seek punitive damages for cause of actions prior to enactment of the amended law, with the specific case dealing with victims and their families from the 1998 United States embassy bombings. The Court ruled unanimously in May 2020 that punitive damages can be sought from foreign nations in such cases for preenactment conduct.
Federal Republic of Germany v. Philipp, 592 U.S. ___ (2021), was a United States Supreme Court case that dealt with the applicability of the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (FSIA) for heirs of victims of the Holocaust to sue Germany in the United States court systems for compensation for items that were taken by the Nazi Party during World War II. At issue in the case was whether claims fell within the FSIA’s exception to sovereign immunity for “property taken in violation of international law,” 28 U.S.C. §1605(a)(3), given that the sovereign here was alleged to have engaged in a taking of its own nationals’ property; and whether courts can invoke the doctrine of international comity under the FSIA to abstain from exercising jurisdiction based on prudential considerations. In an unanimous opinion by Chief Justice Roberts, the Court held that FSIA does not allow these survivors to sue Germany in U.S. court, as the sale was an act of expropriation of property rather than an act of genocide, though other means of recovery are still potentially available.
Acree v. Republic of Iraq, 370 F.3d 41, was a case before the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. U.S. military personnel who had been tortured by Iraq during the 1991 Gulf War sued for damages, arguing that the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (FSIA) made state sponsors of terror liable. Iraq never contested the lawsuit, but the U.S. federal government intervened. The Court of Appeals ultimately decided against the plaintiffs, saying that the FSIA did not create new causes of action against foreign states. The U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the plaintiffs' appeal.
