This guide provides an overview of the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act of 1976 (FSIA). It discusses the FSIA’s purpose and scope of application, and it reviews the jurisdictional, procedural, and evidentiary questions most likely to arise at the outset of litigation.

Although U.S. federal courts across the country are seeing an ever-increasing number of cases associated with international commercial arbitration, few judges are familiar with this unique and complicated area of law.