American International Law Cases Fourth Series 2008 Volume 5

AILC is an annual case law reporter that provides the full text of U. S. court opinions involving international law issues. The courts covered include all U. S. federal district courts, federal appellate courts, and the U. S. Supreme Court, as well as some state courts, the U. S. Court of Claims, the U. S. Court of International Trade, and the U. S. Tax Court. The series seeks to provide not every single case in which a court refers to international law but rather all cases that analyze at least one international law issue in depth. The list of subjects addressed by these volumes is vast and changes from year to year, with the inclusion and prominence of most topics turning on their prevalence in a given year's jurisprudence. Some consistently prominent topics are personal jurisdiction over foreign defendants, deportation procedure, and double taxation. Over the last three editions (2006, 2007, and 2008), many topics have developed rapidly and constitute a correspondingly larger portion of the volumes, particularly Terrorism, the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, Forum Non Conveniens, and an entirely new, added topic: the National Security Exception (to deportation eligibility). The 2008 edition of AILC also features expanded sections on family law and on the detention of terrorist suspects. The U. S. war on terror and the crisis at Guantanamo have made that last topic a significant and dynamic component of AILC. Each edition of AILC also comes framed with two practical resources for students and scholars. The first is an introductory editor's note that both reviews international law's major developments for the given year and explains to readers how to use the volumes. The second is a subject index to allow for targeted research.
Volume Five of AILC 2008 showcases judicial opinions on the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, head of state immunity, venue, conflict of laws, diplomatic immunity, and interpretation of treaties and agreements. Several of those topics are covered by the most important international law case to come out of the American court system in 2008: Medellin v. Texas. The U. S. Supreme Court, in a now hotly debated decision, held that neither an Executive Branch directive nor an international tribunal's ruling trumps a U. S. state's procedural rules for criminal matters. That holding has triggered new questions as to whether the U. S. will truly honor international law in its own domestic courts. In a far less prominent decision that pays greater heed to non-U. S. proceedings, the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals adhered to principles of comity in honoring a Belize court's actions in a corporate case (Belize Telecom v. Government of Belize). These two cases and a host of others in Volume Five update readers on the extent to which U. S. courts currently honor court proceedings held outside the U. S.