India v. New York (Round Three)

Today, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in a long-running dispute between the City of New York and the governments of India and Mongolia over their tax liability for real property used for their permanent missions to the United Nations. A transcript of oral argument is here. (See SCOTUSBlog’s very useful summary here and other links to other commentary here).

I’ve scanned the oral argument. It is a very technical argument relating to the interpretation of the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (FSIA) and I won’t bore our readers (or me) with this here. Of particular interest to me is that the Court is being invited to use international law to interpret the FSIA. This makes sense because the FSIA’s legislative history itself invites this practice and such a presumption of conformity with international law is typically applied anyway. Both sides appear to agree that international law and practice is relevant for the interpretation of the FSIA, although there is some disagreement on whether to rely on a Europe-wide treaty on immunities as evidence of such practice.

Whatever decision for the Court in this case is likely to survey foreign and international practice widely, and for once, there should be no controversy about the use of such materials here.