Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
Articles 1 - 2 of 2
Full-Text Articles in Jurisprudence
Samantar And Executive Power, Peter B. Rutledge
Samantar And Executive Power, Peter B. Rutledge
Scholarly Works
This essay examines Samantar v. Yousuf in the context of broader debate about the relationship between federal common law and executive power. Samantar represents simply the latest effort by the Executive Branch to literally shape the meaning of law through a process referred to in the literature as “executive lawmaking.” While traditional accounts of executive lawmaking typically have treated the idea as a singular concept, Samantar demonstrates the need to bifurcate the concept into at least two different categories: acts of executive lawmaking decoupled from pending litigation and acts of executive lawmaking taken expressly in response to litigation. As Samantar …
Samantar, Official Immunity And Federal Common Law, Peter B. Rutledge
Samantar, Official Immunity And Federal Common Law, Peter B. Rutledge
Scholarly Works
This essay examines the theoretical underpinnings of the immunity of foreign government officials following the Supreme Court's recent decision in Samantar. Part of a forthcoming symposium with the Lewis and Clark Law Review, the paper tackles the federal common law in the Court's decision and, more broadly, international civil litigation. It criticizes the Court's unexamined assumption that its federal common law power extended to create an immunity that, at best, coexists only uncomfortably alongside the legislative framework of the FSIA. It explains the problematic implications of this assertion of federal common law, both for suits against foreign officials and for …