Part of: AGORA: Reflections on RJR Nabisco v. European Community

In RJR Nabisco v. European Community, the Court added an exclamation point to a long term trend in its jurisprudence. It believes, this trend indicates, that private civil suits pose specific foreign relations issues, at least when the targets are foreign transactions and actors, to which the Court will respond by erecting barriers. To this general point the case adds an unsurprising, but still important codicil: These problems don’t go away when foreign states take advantage of the U.S. civil litigation system by acting as plaintiffs.

Citation
Paul B. Stephan, Private Litigation as a Foreign Relations Problem, 110 American Journal of International Law Unbound 40–44 (2016).