The Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (“FSIA”) is the primary domestic statute codifying foreign sovereign immunity—the immunity that foreign nations enjoy in U.S. courts. With scattered exceptions, questions involving foreign immunity outside of FSIA are matters of federal common law. Those questions include foreign-official immunity, whose importance has increased dramatically as the international travel of foreign… Continue reading →
The United States remains the world’s largest foreign-aid donor yet lacks a coordinated system of guidelines and protections to ensure that the aid does more good than harm. Professor Naomi Roht-Arriaza investigates this problem in “Safeguarding Development: Risk Reduction in U.S. Government Foreign Aid and Investment Facilitation Beyond the Current Patchwork,” a new paper published… Continue reading →
A few days ago, the New York Times ran an op-ed about the pervasive problems Pakistanis face accessing drinking water. Tap water is available in many places in Pakistan, but drinking it is a health risk; according to one recent report, forty percent of all deaths in Pakistan result from infectious diseases contracted by drinking… Continue reading →
Global Programs Advisor and UC Hastings Lecturer Jessica Vapnek has spent almost 30 years working in international development, starting with two years in the Peace Corps in a village in the former Zaire. More recently, she has done extensive work in post-conflict West Africa, including Ivory Coast and Liberia. Drawing on her experience, she and… Continue reading →
In a forthcoming book chapter entitled Immunities of Foreign Officials from Civil Jurisdiction, Professor Chimène Keitner takes on one of the more perplexing issues in international law: the immunity of state officials from civil suit. Does the sovereign equality of states—a fundamental rule of the international system—require that state officials be treated like the state… Continue reading →
In their article, Seeking a Rational Approach to a Regional Refugee Crisis: Lessons from the Summer 2014 “Surge” of Central American Women and Children at the US-Mexico Border, Professor Karen Musalo and Center for Gender & Refugee Studies (CGRS) co-Legal Director Eunice Lee examine refugee policy and regional conditions in the Obama era. Although rhetoric… Continue reading →
Distinguished Professor Naomi Roht-Arriaza, author of the pathbreaking monograph The Pinochet Effect: Transitional Justice in the Age of Human Rights and a recently appointed amicus curiae for the Special Jurisdiction for Peace in Colombia, examines the question of Measures of Non-Repetition in Transitional Justice: The Missing Link? in a forthcoming book chapter. The chapter begins… Continue reading →
