[Ch. 12. INTERNATIONAL CONFLICT OF LAWS]

C. Foreign Sovereign Immunity

• What relief is being sought by the plaintiffs?
• What procedural device is employed to obtain that relief? What is a "libel"?
• What defense is being asserted? By whom?
• Does France assert that the ship was legally seized according to the international law of prize?
• Does it matter how the ship got to be "in the service of" France?
• What is the role of the Attorney General in this proceeding?
• Is the defense based on a rule of international law, or U.S. domestic law??
• Would the result have been different, if the French government had sold the ship to a private French citizen engaged in merchant shipping, and the ship had arrived in Philadelphia with commercial cargo?
 

• What claim is being asserted, and what relief is being sought? (Editors edited this part out!)
• Plaintiff's ship, chartered by defendant, sustained damage and was delayed in Spanish port; defendant refused to pay damages demanded by plaintiff and refused to submit to arbitration pursuant to contract clause
• Plaintiff sought an order compelling arbitration
• What defense is asserted?
• What role does the State Department play in this litigation?
• What is the TATE LETTER, and what role does it play in this litigation?
• Does it declare a rule of international law?
• Does it declare a rule of U.S. foreign policy?
• How does the court know that the Comisaria was acting in a commercial and not a sovereign capacity?
• What would the result have been in 1812, as of the time The Schooner Exchange was decided?
• What would the result have been, if the State Department had suggested that the Comisaria General was immune from the jurisdiction of U.S. courts?