Top of page

New Report on Laws of Foreign Governments Lifting Sovereign Immunity

Share this post:

The following is a guest post by Luis Acosta, chief of one of the Law Library’s foreign, comparative, and international law divisions.  Luis also recently wrote a post about a report on education as a constitutional right in foreign countries.

The doctrine of sovereign immunity, or state immunity, is an international law principle that limits how national governments can be sued in domestic courts. While the principle is grounded in the need under international law for governments to carry out international relations in an orderly fashion, it is mostly played out within the national procedural law of individual states governing when national courts can hear particular cases.

A recent report by the Law Library of Congress, Laws Lifting Sovereign Immunity in Selected Countries, provides illustrations of certain countries’ national sovereign immunity laws. Among the countries surveyed are Iran and Russia, which premise their sovereign immunity doctrine on negative reciprocity designed to deter other countries lifting sovereign immunity against them. Cuban law similarly provides for judicial claims for damages arising from acts supported by the United States government. The report also reviews the laws of Libya, Sudan, and Syria.

This report is one of many multinational and single-country reports on diverse subjects available on the Law Library’s website.

Researchers interested in learning more about the state immunity doctrine can use the resources of the Law Library of Congress, which holds many titles on this subject, including:

Comments (2)

  1. Are indigenous tribes granted sovereign immunity. How does it work for chief blood lines and rangatira

    • Kia ora, Pere. There is a doctrine of tribal sovereign immunity in US law with respect to Native American tribes. Some basic principles of the doctrine were discussed at pages 4-7 of the 2014 US Supreme Court decision of Michigan v. Bay Mills Indian Community. Various scholarly articles have also been written on this subject. If you would like assistance with research in this area please submit your question using our Ask A Librarian service.

Add a Comment

This blog is governed by the general rules of respectful civil discourse. You are fully responsible for everything that you post. The content of all comments is released into the public domain unless clearly stated otherwise. The Library of Congress does not control the content posted. Nevertheless, the Library of Congress may monitor any user-generated content as it chooses and reserves the right to remove content for any reason whatever, without consent. Gratuitous links to sites are viewed as spam and may result in removed comments. We further reserve the right, in our sole discretion, to remove a user's privilege to post content on the Library site. Read our Comment and Posting Policy.


Required fields are indicated with an * asterisk.