Keitner: Immunities of Foreign Officials from Civil Jurisdiction

Chimène Keitner (Univ. of California - Hastings College of the Law) has posted Immunities of Foreign Officials from Civil Jurisdiction (in The Cambridge Handbook of Immunities and International Law, Tom Ruys, Nicolas Angelet, & Luca Ferro eds., forthcoming). Here's the abstract

Jurisdictional rules, including immunity-based defenses to jurisdiction, allocate adjudicatory authority horizontally among sovereign states. In contrast to the more well-defined rules governing status-based immunities, this chapter focuses on conduct-based immunities from civil proceedings in light of the relative lack of consensus regarding their contours. First, it reviews some of the historical case law involving conduct-based immunity from civil proceedings in foreign courts, with a focus on U.S. cases. Second, it describes the approach taken more recently by several common-law courts. It concludes with observations on the evolving nature of law in this area.