Summary of Part I

• Author: Ernesto Sanchez
• Pages: 41-42

41

SU MM A R Y O F PART I

(1) Foreign sovereign immunity, a key feature of international law, bars domestic legal actions

against foreign states and their governments, their governments’ organs, and their other

agents (collectively, “foreign sovereign defendants”) without their consent.

(2) e FSIA, incorporating Congress’s interpretation of the international law of foreign

sovereign immunity, provides the sole basis for establishing jurisdiction over foreign sov-

ereign defendants in U.S. courts and establishes circumstances under which legal actions

against such defendants can proceed.

(3) Understanding how international law aects domestic U.S. law in general allows for

accurate interpretation of the FSIA.

(A) e sources of international law are:

(I) International conventions (e.g., treaties);

(II) International custom, as evidence of general practice accepted as law (i.e.,

customary international law); and

(III) General principles of law recognized by major world legal systems.

(B) International and foreign judicial and arbitral decisions, national judicial decisions,

and the teachings of highly qualied experts constitute evidence of international

law.

(C) e U.S. Constitution provides that “all Treaties made, or which shall be made

under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land.”

(I) Treaties ratied by the United States (i.e., signed by the President and

approved by two-thirds of the Senate) override conicting laws at the fed-

eral, state, and local levels.

(II) Treaties cannot override specic provisions of the U.S. Constitution.

(III) A self-executing treaty is equivalent to a legislative act, operating without the

aid of any implementing legislative provision. Non-self-executing treaties do

not become enforceable federal law unless Congress enacts such a provision.

Whether a treaty is self-executing or non-self-executing is a matter of inter-

preting the treaty’s text.

(IV) When interpreting a treaty the United States has ratied, courts, in the

absence of sucient U.S. authority, may consider pertinent foreign laws or

judicial decisions in other signatory states that have also ratied the treaty.

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