Defending Government Tort Litigation: Considerations for Scholars

AbstractI am honored by the invitation to participate in this symposium on “What Practitioners Can Teach Academics About Tort Litigation” and to share my views from the defense side of government tort litigation. I have a foot in each camp of the practitioner/academic divide. For three decades I defended the federal government in Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA) litigation, serving for the last 15 of those years as Deputy Director of the FTCA Staff in the Civil Division of the U.S. Department of Justice. I worked with the FTCA and its jurisprudence on a daily basis—litigating cases, assessing and negotiating proposed settlements, advising agencies and Assistant U.S. Attorneys, and commenting on proposed legislation. I left Justice in 2006 to become an academic, a role in which I have had the pleasure of teaching Torts to first year law students and the time and freedom to write about sovereign immunity, the FTCA, and other things.

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United States: Amendments to the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act Concerning Jurisdiction for Lawsuits Against Terrorist States, Including Technical Correction

International Legal Materials ◽

10.1017/s0020782900016235 ◽

1997 ◽

Vol 36 (3) ◽

pp. 759-760

Keyword(s):

United States ◽

The United States ◽

Sovereign Immunity ◽

Extrajudicial Killing ◽

State Sponsor ◽

The U.S ◽

Tort Claims

Prior to the amendment, the non–commercial tort exception to sovereign immunity, 28 U.S.C. §1605(a)(5), barred tort claims against foreign states where the tort and the resulting injury did not occur in the United States. New §1605(a)(7) denies immunity to states in suits involving torture, extrajudicial killing, hostage taking, and aircraft sabotage, committed outside the U.S. by an official, employee or agent of the offending state while acting within the scope of his employment or agency. The respondent state must have been designated by the Executive as a state sponsor of terrorism. To fall within this new jurisdictional grant, the claim must meet several preconditions, each of which has dispositive jurisdictional significance.

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The Investigations by the Federal Government

The Color of the Third Degree ◽

10.5149/northcarolina/9781469652979.003.0006 ◽

2019 ◽

pp. 104-145

Author(s):

Silvan Niedermeier

Keyword(s):

African American ◽

Law Enforcement ◽

Civil Rights ◽

Federal Government ◽

Department Of Justice ◽

The South ◽

Police Violence ◽

Law Enforcement Officials ◽

The U.S

Chapter five shows the FBI investigations against William F. Sutherland as the first in a series of federal probes launched by representatives of the U.S. Department of Justice to sanction the persistent violation of the civil rights of blacks by law enforcement officials in the South. FBI investigation documented conditions of defendants capturing photos of wounds and evidence of weapons. Regardless of evidence provided against authorities, there was a limited chance of success. In addition, in all the cases covered in chapter five, lawmen were accused of abusing and torturing black suspects in violation of their civil rights. Despite the outcome of the trials, the FBI investigations exposed and brought awareness of police torture. Overall, the FBI investigations brought to light a multitude of other allegations of mistreatment by African American prisoners and challenged the system of police violence in the South.

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Waiving Federal Sovereign Immunity in Original Actions Between States

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform ◽

10.36646/mjlr.53.2.waiving ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 447

Author(s):

Sandra Zellmer

Keyword(s):

Supreme Court ◽

Federal Government ◽

The United States ◽

High Stakes ◽

Sovereign Immunity ◽

Meaningful Participation ◽

The Supreme Court ◽

Lower Courts ◽

Reliable Mechanism ◽

The U.S

There are tremendous disparities between high stakes original actions between states before the U.S. Supreme Court, where there is no waiver of federal sovereign immunity, and other types of cases in the lower courts, where a plethora of immunity waivers allow states and other parties to seek relief from the federal government for Fifth Amendment takings, unlawful agency action, and tort claims. Federal actions or omissions are often at the heart of the dispute, and federal involvement may be crucial for purposes of providing an equitable remedy to the state parties, but there is no reliable mechanism for bringing the federal government to an original action before the Supreme Court. This Article shows how federal sovereign immunity stands in the way of comprehensive resolution of interstate water rights and highlights the need for reforms to facilitate meaningful participation by the United States. In particular, it investigates the merits of a waiver of federal sovereign immunity in original actions between the states. Although federal immunity is a staple of our nation’s jurisprudence, it has no constitutional basis and it serves little purpose in this context. The Article concludes that a congressional waiver of federal sovereign immunity would be appropriate and would have few downsides, at least in the case of original actions between states before the U.S. Supreme Court.

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