Execution of Judgments and Foreign Sovereign Immunity

Abstract

The extent to which foreign sovereigns are entitled to immunity in municipal courts has attracted a vast literature, in recent years especially. The majority view now seems to be that immunity need not extend to commercial transactions entered into by the state, although the precise scope of this “exception” remains unsettled, and the role of international law in “extending” or “withholding” immunity has not yet, perhaps, been clearly analyzed. Indeed, it has been denied that there is any international law rule at all on the subject, a view that would presumably leave each state free to formulate, or negotiate, its own rule.