Halkbank Hits the Supreme Court
The Lawfare Podcast
The Lawfare Institute
4.7 • 6.4K Ratings
🗓️ 18 January 2023
⏱️ 64 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In 2019, the U.S. government took a step that it had never taken before. It brought criminal charges against a foreign state-owned bank, Turkiye Halk Bankasi, or Halkbank, which is majority-owned by the country of Turkiye (until recently known as Turkey), for evading U.S. sanctions on Iran. Turkiye in turn argued that such a move was not only unprecedented but prohibited by the legal immunities it is entitled to under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, or FSIA. Yesterday, those arguments reached the U.S. Supreme Court where both sides seemed to agree on just one thing—that the court's eventual decision could well have major consequences for the United States and its foreign relations.
To talk through oral arguments in Halkbank, Lawfare senior editor Scott R. Anderson sat down with two leading sovereign immunity experts: Professor Chimène Keitner of the University of California Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco, and Professor Ingrid Wuerth of Vanderbilt Law School. They discussed how each side reads the FSIA and other related statutes, whether any of the justices seemed particularly persuaded, and where the court—as well as the broader issue—seems likely to go from here.
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| 1:08.0 | And so I do worry more about a position in which Congress is opening up the |
| 1:16.0 | can of worms, so to speak, than one in which it's cabiting |
| 1:20.0 | a state court, exercise or state prosecutorial discretion |
| 1:24.0 | with a view to preserving federal foreign relations authority. |
| 1:30.0 | So I think either way we're bound to see some sort of legislative response |
| 1:34.0 | and the outcome of this case will obviously matter to Hulk Bank in terms of whether or not |
| 1:40.0 | this particular prosecution goes forward. |
| 1:42.0 | But after that, I think the can will essentially be kicked to the |
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