In the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit

In: International legal materials: ILM, Volume 20, Issue 1, p. 161-170

Abstract

In enacting section 1605(a)(1) of the FSIA, Congress manifestly intended that an arbitration agreement should constitute a waiver of foreign sovereign immunity. The legislative history expressly mentions as examples of implicit waivers "cases where a foreign state has agreed to arbitration in another country or where a foreign state has agreed that the law of a particular country should govern a contract." H. Rep. No. 94-1487 at 18. To date, only one other court has had occasion to interpret and apply the waiver provision of section 1605(a)(1) with respect to the enforcement of foreign judgments, and it reached the same result as the court below, viz., that an agreement to arbitrate in a third country constitutes a waiver of foreign sovereign immunity.