Document Type
Article
Publication Title
Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law
Publication Date
2011
Page Number
1233
Disciplines
Law
Abstract
If the international law of immunity once purported to make foreign states, their rulers, their officials, and their boats all identical in some sense--the sovereign equality of states--today immunity distinguishes and differentiates between the state's commercial and private features, its tortious and non-tortious conduct committed in the forum state, and sometimes even the torture, war crimes, and acts of terrorism carried out in its name. Of course, sovereign equality has diminished in general as human rights have grown, but even as nation-states accept treaty-based obligations toward their own citizens, they refuse to make themselves explicitly accountable in the national courts of other countries and usually refuse to hold other states accountable in their own courts. Immunity often remains the stylized equalizer.
Recommended Citation
Ingrid Wuerth,
Symposium Epilog: Foreign Sovereign Immunity at Home and Abroad, 44 Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law. 1233
(2011)
Available at: https://scholarship.law.vanderbilt.edu/faculty-publications/39