AMERICAN INTERNATIONAL LAW CASES Fourth Series 2009 VOLUME 5

Book excerpt: AILC is an annual case law reporter that provides the full text of U.S. court opinions involving international law issues. The courts covered include all U.S. federal district courts, federal appellate courts, and the U.S. Supreme Court, as well as some state courts, the U.S. Court of Claims, the U.S. Court of International Trade, and the U.S. Tax Court. The series seeks to provide not every single case in which a court refers to international law but rather all cases that analyze at least one international law issue in depth. The list of subjects addressed by these volumes is vast and changes from year to year, with the inclusion and prominence of most topics turning on their prevalence in a given year's jurisprudence. Some consistently prominent topics are personal jurisdiction over foreign defendants, deportation procedure, and double taxation. Over the last three editions (2006, 2007, and 2008), many topics have developed rapidly and constitute a correspondingly larger portion of the volumes, particularly Terrorism, the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, Forum Non Conveniens, and an entirely new, added topic: the National Security Exception (to deportation eligibility). The 2008 edition of AILC also features expanded sections on family law and on the detention of terrorist suspects. The U.S. war on terror and the crisis at Guantanamo have made that last topic a significant and dynamic component of AILC. Each edition of AILC also comes framed with two practical resources for students and scholars. The first is an introductory editor's note that both reviews international law's major developments for the given year and explains to readers how to use the volumes. The second is a subject index to allow for targeted research. Volume Five of AILC covers procedural aspects, the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act and the commercial exception, the Act of State Doctrine, U.S. Sovereign Immunity, and the Alien Tort Claim Act. In Sonia Ghawanmeh v. Islamic Saudi Academy, an issue was whether the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia's operation of the Islamic Saudi Academy constitutes commercial activity under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act. An issue in Vishranthamma Swarna v. Badar al-Awadi was whether the individual defendants, by virtue of their diplomatic immunity, or Kuwait, by virtue of its sovereign immunity, are immune from any or all of the plaintiff's claims. The plaintiff brought claims under international law for trafficking, involuntary servitude, enslavement, forced labor, and sexual slavery.