Injunctions in Sovereign Debt Litigation
Mark C. Weidemaier
University of North Carolina (UNC) at Chapel Hill - School of Law
Anna Gelpern
Georgetown University Law Center
September 25, 2013
Yale Journal on Regulation, 2014, Forthcoming
UNC Legal Studies Research Paper No. 2330914
Abstract:
Injunctions against foreign sovereigns have come under criticism on comity and enforcement grounds. We argue that these objections are overstated. Comity considerations are important but not dispositive. Enforcement objections assign too much significance to the court’s inability to impose meaningful contempt sanctions, overlooking the fact that, when a foreign sovereign is involved, both money judgments and injunctions are enforced through what amounts to a court-imposed embargo. This embargo discourages third parties from dealing with the sovereign and, if sufficiently costly, can induce the sovereign to comply. Nevertheless, we are skeptical about injunctions in sovereign debt
litigation. They are prone to dramatic spillover effects precisely because they cannot reach their primary target, the sovereign government. Recent decisions in NML v. Argentina illustrate the way in which a court’s inability to compel compliance by the sovereign may lead it to impose dramatic and potentially unwarranted costs on third parties, turning traditional equitable analysis on its head.
Number of Pages in PDF File: 44 litigation. They are prone to dramatic spillover effects precisely because they cannot reach their primary target, the sovereign government. Recent decisions in NML v. Argentina illustrate the way in which a court’s inability to compel compliance by the sovereign may lead it to impose dramatic and potentially unwarranted costs on third parties, turning traditional equitable analysis on its head.Keywords: sovereign debt
, sovereign immunity, injunctions, ArgentinaJEL Classification: F34, K41
Accepted Paper Series
* Weidemaier is a faculty member at the University of North Carolina School of Law and Gelpern is
a faculty member at Georgetown University Law Center and a nonresident senior fellow at the Peter
G. Peterson Institute for International Economics. For comments and suggestions, we are grateful
to the editors at the Yale Journal on Regulation and to Francine Barber, Fred Bloom, Lee Buchheit,
John Coyle, Jill Family, Amanda Frost, Mitu Gulati, James Kerr, and Bo Rutledge. We thank Will
Chamberlain, Kerry Boehm, and Ben Szany for research assistance.
1 Many sovereigns waive sovereign immunity when issuing bonds in foreign capital markets. See W.
Mark C. Weidemaier, Sovereign Immunity and Sovereign Debt, ILL. L. REV. (forthcoming), available at
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2180228. Even without a waiver, national
courts may have jurisdiction to hear claims arising out of sovereign loans. See Republic of Argentina v.
Weltover, 504 U.S. 607 (1992) (holding that issuance of bonds was a commercial activity for which a
Kann diese olle Gelpern nicht mal ihre Schnauze halten ?
AntwortenLöschenKommt eh immer nur das wiedergekäute Buchheit Geseiere raus.
Anna Gelpern ist eine nette gutaussehende Professorin. Ich habe sie mal in London auf einem pari passu event bei Freshfields getroffen. Sie kannte sogar das eine oder andere Blog von mir.
AntwortenLöschenAlso, einer Dame begegnet man höflich und mit Respekt !!