Foreign Dictators in U.S. Court, Part II

Yesterday, I explained that foreign dictators are increasingly exploiting access to court by filing frivolous claims against dissidents and newspapers in the U.S. Authoritarian regimes can do that because of three doctrinal areas that I’ll discuss today: the so-called “foreign privilege to bring suit,” the equal treatment principle, and statutory/common law protections that dictators receive as defendants. As I argue in a forthcoming article, excerpted here, the combination of these three areas leads to a problematic asymmetry: “[F]oreign dictators and their proxies can access our courts as plaintiffs to harass their opponents, but their regimes are, in turn, usually immune from lawsuits here.” By Diego Zambrano. Full Text ->Reason

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