Originally from Enforcement of Arbitral Awards Against Sovereigns

This chapter addresses the unique legal issues that arise when a judgment creditor seeks to enforce, attach, or execute an arbitral award or resulting judgment against a state-owned company. Enforcement proceedings against state-owned companies in U.S. courts can simultaneously implicate issues of federal, state, and foreign law, and any prudent commercial actor entering into an agreement with a foreign state or one of its agencies or instrumentalities should, to the extent possible, identify the state and foreign law issues that may impact its ability to collect any judgment following a dispute.

Parts II through IV of this chapter provide a basic overview of the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act of 1976 (“FSIA”), the federal statute that confers presumptive sovereign immunity on foreign states and their instrumentalities and sets the basic rules governing litigation against them in the United States, focusing on the unique jurisdictional rules that govern a party’s ability to commence and maintain an action against a foreign state or instrumentality and the equally unique rules that govern postjudgment proceedings to attach or execute assets in aid of a judgment (including a judgment rendered on an arbitral award). Part V discusses specific issues under the FSIA that a party seeking to enforce a judgment against a state-owned company is likely to encounter.