Symposium: The Restatement (Fourth)

• O’Keefe, Roger 1

Abstract

Chapter 5 of the Restatement of the Law (Fourth): The Foreign Relations Law of the United States provides a systematic, discerning and accessible account of the US law of foreign sovereign immunity as laid down in the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (FSIA), accompanied by consistent comparative reference to the international and foreign domestic law of state immunity. From the perspective of a non-US reader, however, where Chapter 5 adds greater value in its own right is in the attention it pays in the comments and reporters’ notes to a range of preliminary issues of domestic law on the determination of which the provisions of the FSIA turn but that the latter do not regulate. These issues, although superficially peculiar to the US law of foreign sovereign immunity, arise similarly in connection with the corresponding international and foreign domestic rules. In this way, what are ostensibly the most particular aspects of Chapter 5 may be those of most universal interest.

• 1Professor of International Law, Bocconi University, Milan, Italy