Missouri’s Legal Fight Against China Continues with Sean Mirski and Aaron Sobel
The Lawfare Podcast
The Lawfare Institute
4.7 • 6.4K Ratings
🗓️ 14 June 2024
⏱️ 46 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On today’s episode, Matt Gluck, Research Fellow at Lawfare, spoke with Sean Mirski and Aaron Sobel of Arnold & Porter. Mirski practices foreign-relations, international, and appellate law, and Sobel practices international and appellate law. They discussed Mirski and Sobel’s recent Lawfare piece, co-authored with John Bellinger and Catherine McCarthy, on the Eighth Circuit’s decision reviving part of Missouri’s coronavirus-related lawsuit against several defendants connected to the Chinese government.
They spoke about the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, Missouri’s claims and why one of them survived the Eighth Circuit’s jurisdictional review, how this decision might affect other coronavirus lawsuits, and the potential implications of the decision for U.S. foreign policy, among other topics.
Check out Mirski’s recent book, “We May Dominate the World: Ambition, Anxiety, and the Rise of the American Colossus,” which examines the roots of the United States’ ascension to hegemony and was rated by Kirkus as one of the 100 best non-fiction books of 2023.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The following podcast contains advertising. |
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| 0:28.4 | So the Eighth Circuit Panel broadly decides two issues. |
| 0:35.0 | First, the question of whether the defendants presumptively have immunity under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, |
| 0:41.0 | and then second, whether that immunity is pierced by any of the relevant |
| 0:45.6 | exceptions to immunity within the foreign sovereign immunity act. |
| 0:49.4 | It's the Law Fair podcast I'm Matt Gluck research fellow Fellow at Law Fair, with Sean Mearsky and Aaron Soebell of Arnold and Porter. |
| 0:58.0 | Mearsky practices foreign relations international and appellate law, and so Bell practices foreign relations and |
| 1:04.6 | international law. The courts have assumed that Missouri's factual allegations |
| 1:09.6 | are true but on remand what Missouri is going to have to do is prove that China actually |
| 1:14.4 | manipulated the worldwide PPE market to conclusively overcome the FSIA and |
| 1:20.0 | obtained that judgment against the Chinese defendants. |
| 1:24.5 | Today, we're talking about coronavirus lawsuits |
| 1:27.4 | against China and US courts, |
| 1:29.7 | and one in particular that recently cleared |
| 1:32.2 | a jurisdictional hurdle. |
| 1:34.5 | The excellent piece you both wrote in lawfare is about one lawsuit brought by the state of |
| 1:39.7 | Missouri against China related to the coronavirus. |
| 1:44.0 | But this is just one of the COVID-related lawsuits |
| 1:47.0 | that plaintiffs have filed against China. |
... |
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