History
Sovereign Immunity has long been the norm in U.S. courts. In an early case, the Supreme Court held that a private party could not sue the government of France. In that case, The Schooner Exchange v. M'Faddon, 11 U.S. 116 (1812), the Supreme Court concluded that a plaintiff cannot sue a foreign sovereign claiming ownership to a war ship which had taken refuge in Philadelphia. Relying on common law principles, U.S. courts routinely refused to hear claims against foreign governments, even where those claims related to commercial activities. In addition, courts generally relied on suggestions of immunity filed by the U.S. State Department in actions against foreign sovereigns. In 1952, the State Department, noting the development of immunity in other nations, adopted the Restrictive Theory of Sovereign Immunity according to which the Public Acts (Jure Imperii) of a Foreign State are entitled to immunity, while the Private Acts (Jure Gestionis) are not. In passing the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act in 1976, Congress largely codified the Restrictive Theory of Immunity, but, in an effort to de-politicize sovereign immunity determinations, it vested the courts (rather than the Executive) with authority to determine whether a Foreign State is entitled to immunity. Though the Act places the determination of sovereign immunity fully in the hands of the judiciary, many courts have expressed reluctance to find that a defendant is a sovereign if the "state" in question is one that the U.S. government has not officially recognized, even if the defendant may arguably satisfy the definition of statehood under international law.
Read more about this topic: Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Throughout the history of commercial life nobody has ever quite liked the commission man. His function is too vague, his presence always seems one too many, his profit looks too easy, and even when you admit that he has a necessary function, you feel that this function is, as it were, a personification of something that in an ethical society would not need to exist. If people could deal with one another honestly, they would not need agents.”
—Raymond Chandler (1888–1959)
“The reverence for the Scriptures is an element of civilization, for thus has the history of the world been preserved, and is preserved.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Every generation rewrites the past. In easy times history is more or less of an ornamental art, but in times of danger we are driven to the written record by a pressing need to find answers to the riddles of today.... In times of change and danger when there is a quicksand of fear under men’s reasoning, a sense of continuity with generations gone before can stretch like a lifeline across the scary present and get us past that idiot delusion of the exceptional Now that blocks good thinking.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)