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Introduction

The recent Supreme Court decision in Samantar v. Yousuf[1] definitively resolved one major question about the immunities of foreign government officials from civil suits in U.S. courts; at the same time, it left several others wide open. It thereby guaranteed that the source, scope, and certainty of such immunities will continue to be litigated energetically. This Insight explores some of the questions that will likely figure prominently in that litigation.

Introduction

The past several months have given rise to a number of high-level judicial resignations. While the media has been saturated with commentary regarding the retirement of Justice John Paul Stevens from the United States Supreme Court, of equally profound interest to international legal observers is the retirement of two judges from the International Court of Justice in The Hague, the Netherlands (“the ICJ” or “the Court”) – Judge Thomas Buergenthal of the United States and Judge Shi Jiuyong of China.

Introduction

I. Introduction

The power to tax is the power to destroy, or at the very least, the power to make imports of men’s gloves more expensive than imports of women’s gloves. An international business person importing goods into the United States might think that a law which treated differently an identical men’s and women’s product would somehow run afoul of the United States Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause. The Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (Federal Circuit) has held that it does not.

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