Survivors Brief in Opposition
On Petition for a Writ of Certiorari to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit
The Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (FSIA) provides that “[a] foreign state shall not be immune from the jurisdiction of the courts of the United States or of the States in any case” in which one of the enumerated exceptions to immunity applies. 28 U.S.C. § 1605(a). The questions presented in the following document are:
1. Whether a district court can effectively extend immunity to a foreign sovereign based on comity-based common-law principles when the FSIA expressly provides that the foreign sovereign “shall not be immune.”
2. Whether the court of appeals correctly applied settled legal principles governing the doctrine of forum non-conveniens to the facts of this case.