France has never legislated on State immunity to the same extent as the US, UK and other countries. Instead, sovereign immunity under customary international law has been mainly governed by case law, save for two little known provisions: Article 111-1 of the civil enforcement procedures code providing for the principle of immunity of domestic and foreign public entities,…

The US Supreme Court’s judgment of 20 April 2016 in the case of Bank Markazi, aka The Central Bank of Iran, Petitioner v. Deborah Peterson, et al. highlights the increasingly isolated nature of US practice on sovereign immunity. As well as addressing issues of constitutional law, the judgment is also significant from an international law perspective; the…