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Foreign State Immunity and the Right to Court Access

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Foreign State Immunity and the Right to Court Access FOREIGN STATE IMMUNITY AND THE RIGHT TO COURT ACCESS ∗ CHRISTOPHER A. WHYTOCK INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................. 2034 I. THE FOREIGN STATE IMMUNITY DOCTRINE ...................................... 2038 A. Origins ....................................................................................... 2038 B. Evolution ................................................................................... 2041 C. Justifications .............................................................................. 2044 1. Formal Justifications ........................................................... 2044 2. Functional Justifications ...................................................... 2046 II. THE RIGHT TO COURT ACCESS .......................................................... 2048 A. Public International Law Doctrines .......................................... 2049 B. Private International Law Doctrines ......................................... 2050 C. Domestic Constitutions .............................................................. 2052 D. Court Access as International Legal Right ................................ 2055 III. THE IMPACT OF FOREIGN STATE IMMUNITY ON COURT ACCESS ...... 2059 A. Limits on Forum State, Third State, and Foreign State Court Access .............................................................................. 2060 1. Court Access in the Forum State ......................................... 2060 2. Court Access in Third States ............................................... 2061 3. Court Access in the Foreign State ....................................... 2061 B. Empirical Analysis ..................................................................... 2063 1. The U.S. Statutory Framework for Foreign State Immunity ............................................................................. 2063 ∗ Professor of Law and Political Science, University of California, Irvine School of Law. Thanks to Adam Chilton for collaboration on the dataset used for this Article’s analysis. For helpful comments on drafts of this Article, I thank Funmi Arewa, Sameer Ashar, Deepa Badrinarayana, Curtis Bradley, Annie Bunting, Jennifer Chacón, Trey Childress, Catherine Fisk, Jonathan Glater, Nienke Grossman, David Kaye, Sarah Lawsky, Evan Lee, Stephen Lee, Carrie Menkel-Meadow, Tim Meyer, Julian Davis Mortenson, Susannah Pollvogt, Katie Porter, Michael Ramsey, Michael Robinson-Dorn, Kenneth Stahl, Shauhin Talesh, John Tasioulas, Christina Tsou, and Robert Wai, as well as participants at the ASIL-ESIL Rechtskulturen Workshop at the Lauterpacht Centre for International Law, University of Cambridge; the 2012 American Society of International Law Midyear Meeting, University of Georgia; the 2012 International Conference on Law and Society; and faculty workshops at UC Hastings College of Law and the University of California, Irvine School of Law. Thanks also to Reed Bernet, Christina Chen, Yimeng Dou, Andrea LaFountain, Sabyl Landrum, Mallory Sepler-King, Minyoung Shin, Phil Syers, Sirena Wu, and the staff of the University of California, Irvine Law Library for excellent research assistance, and Andrew Campbell, Sara Galloway, and Dianna Sahhar for valuable logistical support. 2033 2034 BOSTON UNIVERSITY LAW REVIEW [Vol. 93:2033 2. The FSIA Dataset ................................................................ 2065 3. Impact on Court Access in the United States ...................... 2069 4. The Likelihood of Meaningful Court Access in the Foreign State ........................................................................ 2073 IV. MITIGATING THE TENSION BETWEEN FOREIGN STATE IMMUNITY AND COURT ACCESS: A PROPOSAL ................................................... 2077 A. The Status Quo .......................................................................... 2077 B. A Proportionality Approach ...................................................... 2082 1. Proposal ............................................................................. 2082 2. Objections ............................................................................ 2085 C. A Strategy for Change ............................................................... 2089 CONCLUSION ................................................................................................. 2092 INTRODUCTION There is a growing tension between the foreign state immunity doctrine and the right to court access.1 According to the foreign state immunity doctrine, a state generally is immune from suit in another state’s courts.2 For example, the doctrine ordinarily would protect France (or any of its political subdivisions, agencies, or instrumentalities) from suit in the courts of the United States.3 The foreign state immunity doctrine emerged in the early nineteenth century and is widely acknowledged to be a rule of customary international law.4 It is typically justified on either the formal ground that, because states are equal and independent sovereigns, one state cannot sit in judgment of another – as 1 This Article uses the term “state” in the international legal sense; that is, to refer to a “country” such as the United States or Kenya rather than a U.S. state such as California or Utah. See RESTATEMENT (THIRD) OF FOREIGN RELATIONS LAW OF THE UNITED STATES § 201 (1987) (“Under international law, a state is an entity that has a defined territory and a permanent population, under the control of its own government, and that engages in, or has the capacity to engage in, formal relations with other such entities.”); BARRY E. CARTER ET AL., INTERNATIONAL LAW 444 (5th ed. 2007) (“A ‘state’ in international law is what we often refer to as a nation or country (such as the United States of America or Japan) and is not one of the 50 U.S. states (such as California).”). 2 United Nations Convention on Jurisdictional Immunities of States and Their Property art. 5, G.A. Res. 59/38, U.N. Doc. A/RES/59/38, at 3 (Dec. 16, 2004) [hereinafter UN Convention] (“A State enjoys immunity, in respect of itself and its property, from the jurisdiction of the courts of another State subject to the provisions of the present Convention.”). “State immunity” is sometimes called “sovereign immunity.” See, e.g., SEAN D. MURPHY, PRINCIPLES OF INTERNATIONAL LAW 302 (2d ed. 2012) (using “state” and “sovereign” immunity interchangeably). 3 See 28 U.S.C. § 1603 (2006) (defining “foreign state” as including “a political subdivision of a foreign state or an agency or instrumentality of a foreign state”); id. § 1604 (providing that “a foreign state shall be immune from the jurisdiction of the courts of the United States” except as otherwise provided). 4 See infra Part I. 2013] FOREIGN STATE IMMUNITY 2035 expressed by the maxim par in parem non habet imperium5 – or on the functional ground that the doctrine facilitates foreign relations.6 But in the mid-twentieth century, a competing principle began to emerge: the right to court access.7 According to this right, a person is entitled to access to a fair hearing by an independent and impartial court for the determination of a legal claim.8 Court access plays an important role in protecting rights, compensating for injuries, implementing the rule of law, and facilitating the peaceful and just resolution of disputes.9 As a result, the right to court access is widely accepted.10 It is expressed in the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the 1966 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, regional agreements such as the 1950 European Convention on Human Rights and the 1969 American Convention on Human Rights, and a growing number of domestic constitutions.11 Even if its precise contours are not entirely settled, the right to court access is increasingly recognized in both international and domestic law.12 The problem is that the foreign state immunity doctrine can prohibit what the right to court access requires: if a plaintiff sues a foreign state defendant in a particular court, and the foreign state is immune from suit, then the court will dismiss the plaintiff’s claim, denying her court access.13 Simply put, foreign state immunity can “den[y] . a legal remedy in respect of what may be a valid legal claim; as such, immunity is open to objection.”14 5 See HAZEL FOX, THE LAW OF STATE IMMUNITY 57 (2d ed. 2008) (defining “the maxim par in parem non habet imperium [as] one sovereign State is not subject to the jurisdiction of another State”). 6 See RESTATEMENT (THIRD) OF FOREIGN RELATIONS LAW OF THE UNITED STATES ch. 5, intro. note (1987) (justifying the doctrine as “necessary for the effective conduct of international intercourse and the maintenance of friendly relations”). 7 See generally ACCESS TO JUSTICE AS A HUMAN RIGHT (Francesco Francioni ed., 2007) (documenting the emergence of an international and domestic right of individuals to court access). 8 See, e.g., Francesco Francioni, The Rights of Access to Justice Under Customary International Law, in ACCESS TO JUSTICE AS A HUMAN RIGHT, supra note 7, at 1, 1 (defining court access as “the possibility for the individual to bring a claim before a court and have a court adjudicate it” and, more specifically, the right to have a claim “heard and adjudicated in accordance with substantive standards of fairness and justice”). 9 See infra Part II. 10 See infra Part II. 11 See infra notes 90, 133-35, and Figure 1. 12 See Francioni, supra note 8, at 50 (arguing that foreign state immunity and court access “both reflect norms of customary
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