Written by Bill Dodge, the John D. Ayer Chair in Business Law and Martin Luther King Jr. Professor of Law at UC Davis School of Law.

On September 1, 2023, the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress promulgated the Foreign State Immunity Law of the People’s Republic of China (FSIL) (English translation here). When the law enters into force on January 1, 2024, China will join those countries—a clear majority—that have adopted the restrictive theory of foreign state immunity. For the law of state immunity, this move is particularly significant because China had been the most important adherent to the rival, absolute theory of foreign state immunity.

In two prior posts (here and here), I discussed a draft of the FSIL (English translation here). In this post I analyze the final version of the law, noting some of its key provision and identifying changes from the draft, some of which address issues that I had identified. I also explain why analysts who see China’s new law as a form of “Wolf Warrior Diplomacy” are mistaken. Contrary to some suggestions, the FSIL will not allow China to sue the United States over U.S. export controls on computer chips or potential restrictions on Tiktok. Rather, the FSIL is properly viewed as a step towards joining the international community on an important question of international law. Read more

This blogpost is an edited version of this blogpost written in Dutch by Stichting IJI (The Hague Institute for private international law and foreign law). We thought it was interesting to also bring it to the attention of the international readership of this blog.

Introduction

In the Netherlands, international high-tech surrogacy is a hot topic, resulting in interesting legal developments. Recently, a Dutch District Court dealt with a case on the recognition of US court decisions on legal parenthood over children born from a high-tech surrogacy trajectory in the US, providing many private international law insights on how to assess such request for recognition. Furthermore, on July 4 a bill was proposed that encloses several private international law provisions. This blogpost briefly highlights both developments.

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This post is by Carlos Manuel Vázquez, a professor of law at Georgetown Law School. It is cross-posted at Transnational Litigation Blog.

Claude Cassirer brought suit in federal court in California eighteen years ago against the Thyssen Bornemisza Museum of Madrid, Spain, to recover a painting by Camille Pissarro that was stolen from his grandmother by the Nazis during World War II.  After a reversal and remand from the U.S. Supreme Court last summer, the case is now before the Ninth Circuit for decision of the legal question that is likely to be decisive:  which law governs?

The district court and the court of appeals have so far framed the issue as a binary choice: the governing law on the merits is either that of Spain or that of California.   I suggest here that the issue is better framed as a choice between the law of Spain, on the one hand, and the laws of all the other states or countries with connections to the dispute, on the other.  (Disclosure: I submitted expert declarations in support of the plaintiffs on issues of public international law during earlier phases of this case.)

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit has affirmed the district court’s holding that, under the law of Spain, the plaintiff loses because the museum acquired title to the painting through adverse possession (otherwise known as acquisitive prescription).  It is equally clear that, under the law of California, the plaintiff would prevail because California does not recognize the acquisition of title to moveable property through adverse possession.  What has so far not featured prominently in the courts’ analyses of the choice-of-law issue is that the plaintiff would also prevail under the laws of all the other jurisdictions that have relevant connections to the dispute.  Under governmental interest analysis, this should be central to the analysis. Read more