Haley S. Anderson
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hsanderson.bsky.social
Haley S. Anderson
@hsanderson.bsky.social
770 followers 960 following 170 posts
Academic Fellow @ Columbia Law School.
PhD Candidate @ Berkeley JSP.
Postgraduate Fellow @justsecurity.bsky.social.
Working on sovereignty, civil procedure, and international law.
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hsanderson.bsky.social
A bit belated, but I’m very excited to share that my job market paper is now forthcoming in the Washington & Lee Law Review.

And I’m officially on the law faculty market for civ pro, int’l law, fed courts & related fields. I appreciate help spreading the word!

papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....
Screenshot of first page of "The Sovereignty of Personal Jurisdiction," which can be found at the SSRN link above.
September 2, 2025 at 12:41 PM
hsanderson.bsky.social
Petition to make today's scholarship sound more like the early moderns'

(From Bynkershoek, "De foro legatorum," 1744)
Screenshot from Bynkershoek's "De foro legatorum," quoting: "The range of popular discussion of the origin of arrest and attachment is amazing. You may sate your mind on these dainty morsels by reading Peck, De iure sistendi, chapter 2; Busius, note 7 of his comments on Digest, V.i, De iudiciis; Hillinger on Doneau, XVII.15.2; Groenewegen on Code, III.xviii, Ubi conveniatur qui certo loco dare promisit; and Voet in notes 22 and 23 on Digest, II.iv, De in ius vocando. But you need pay no more attention to these comments than if they had never been written, and may direct your attention exclusively to the different types of authority which now exist and to the different kinds of subjection of persons and things which result from them."
July 17, 2025 at 9:02 PM
hsanderson.bsky.social
Everything old is new again
Screenshot of the opening sentences of a law review article from Dec. 1940. It reads: "While the following pages were written the world witnessed events which demonstrated with brutal clarity the complete collapse of the international community and its traditional legal order. It is almost impossible to imagine that international law in its classical sense, as the law regulating the relations among sixty odd members of a family of nations, can and ever will be revived and revitalized along the lines shaped during the past three centuries. Yet the American courts, at the present as well as in the future, will be confronted with questions involving foreign relations. It might even be that in times like ours the treatment by the courts of legal issues which involve foreign relations has gained increasing importance in a country which wants to stay out of foreign embroilment without sacrificing its ideals of an administration of justice."
July 10, 2025 at 7:57 PM
hsanderson.bsky.social
On one hand, the state of the country/world is very very bad.

On the other hand, people used to publish sentences like this.
Screenshot from Jan de Louter's introduction to the 1946 translation of "De foro legatorum liber singularis" by Bynkershoek. Circled sentence reads: "During one of those spasmodic explosions of stock-jobbery that so often shook Western Europe and even excited the usually composed mind of the Dutch to perilous excess, it happened that the envoy-extraordinary of the duke of Schleswig-Holstein at The Hague became involved in huge speculations of the Pacific Company and, having lost, was summoned by his creditors before the Court of Holland in 1720."
July 1, 2025 at 7:17 PM
hsanderson.bsky.social
That said, at least the unanimous decision got all circuits on the same page about the FSIA not incorporating the "minimum contacts" test.
Screenshot from decision. Text reads: "The facts of this suit are complex, but the legal question we address today is straightforward. The text and structure of the FSIA demonstrate that Congress did not require 'minimum contacts' over and above the contacts already required by the Act's enumerated exceptions to foreign sovereign immunity."
June 5, 2025 at 6:18 PM
hsanderson.bsky.social
But that's not how the statute is written?

§1330 first provides for subject matter jurisdiction where an exception to immunity applies, then it says personal jurisdiction exists _as to every claim for relief over which the district courts have SMJ_ where service is proper.
April 9, 2025 at 12:17 PM
hsanderson.bsky.social
What's especially striking is that the court considered personal jurisdiction _before_ considering whether an exception to immunity applied.

So personal jurisdiction could seemingly exist under the FSIA even where no exception applies (aka where there's no subject matter jurisdiction).
Opening paragraphs of decision summarizing magistrate judge's position that there was personal jurisdiction but no subject matter jurisdiction, then agreeing with the magistrate on personal jurisdiction but disagreeing on subject matter jurisdiction.
April 9, 2025 at 12:17 PM
hsanderson.bsky.social
Personal jurisdiction based on service outside the US alone?

A DC district court decision out yesterday at the personal jurisdiction x foreign sovereign immunity intersection caught my attention amidst everything else.
Case heading for Goodwin v. Syria decision issued April 8, 2025 Analysis of personal jurisdiction in the opinion, finding personal jurisdiction under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act where the plaintiff served the defendant by diplomatic note and could not do so otherwise.
April 9, 2025 at 12:17 PM
hsanderson.bsky.social
Now, the Court may have another way to avoid the issue in Devas.

The FSIA includes various exceptions to immunity in suits against foreign states and their instrumentalities. One relates to arbitration agreements and awards.
screenshot of text of 28 USC 1605(a)(6), with elements for enforcing an arbitral agreement or confirming an arbitral award underlined
March 2, 2025 at 6:02 PM
hsanderson.bsky.social
This approach rests largely on an obtuse line of dicta in SCOTUS’s 1992 decision, Argentina v Weltover (screenshot).

Screenshot from Ingrid Brunk’s recent TLBlog post on Devas: tlblog.org/foreign-stat...

See also her 2019 article: papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....
Quote from Argentina v Weltover: "Assuming, without deciding, that a foreign state is a 'person' for purposes of the Due Process Clause, cf. South Carolina v. Katzenbach, 383 U.S. 301, 323–324, 86 S.Ct. 803, 815–816, 15 L.Ed.2d 769 (1966) (States of the Union are not 'persons' for purposes of the Due Process Clause), we find that Argentina possessed 'minimum contacts' that would satisfy the constitutional test."
March 2, 2025 at 6:02 PM
hsanderson.bsky.social
Tomorrow morning, the Supreme Court will hear arguments in Devas v Antrix on whether foreign states are “persons” within the meaning of the Due Process Clause.

I wrote about this in an article that came out last year, so let’s discuss!

papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

#CivPro #CivilProcedure
screenshot of title and abstract for "Procedural Sovereign Distinction" article linked in body of post
March 2, 2025 at 6:02 PM
hsanderson.bsky.social
About those notes I’ve been looking for
Orange and white cat curled up with the corner of a document peeking out from underneath
February 17, 2025 at 2:19 PM
hsanderson.bsky.social
Want to feel academically unproductive?
Alarming list of Brainerd Currie's publications on "false conflicts"/"false problems" in a law review footnote
June 14, 2024 at 7:01 PM
hsanderson.bsky.social
A great and measured read.

The US recently tried sanctioning ICC officials. It didn’t go very well.
“Thinking back to the seemingly endless number of foreign government officials, civil society members, and others that we interviewed in the course of our research for the ASIL Task Force report, it would be hard to overstate how powerfully the imposition of such sanctions against the ICC was seen as an affront to basic values, and how negatively the imposition of such sanctions affected the views of friends and allies toward the United States. The sanctions and the accompanying threats fundamentally undermined their confidence in the commitment of the United States to broader issues of human rights and the rule of law. It was widely observed that the sanctions made it more difficult to pursue reforms of the ICC system then under consideration by the Rome Statute parties that would have been in the interests of the US, and it undermined the willingness and ability of traditional friends and allies to work with the US as a responsible international partner in other contexts.”
May 22, 2024 at 2:04 PM
hsanderson.bsky.social
Time to update email signatures etc etc 🎉
Screenshot of an email notification from Berkeley Graduate Division saying “Your request to Advancement to Candidacy has been approved.”
April 5, 2024 at 2:09 AM
hsanderson.bsky.social
With all his enthusiasm for phone apps, you’d think he might have run across this one??
Screenshot of iPhone calculator app
February 7, 2024 at 1:18 AM
hsanderson.bsky.social
Alito vs. Thomas vs. Scalia, in a nutshell

(concurrences from Samantar v. Yousuf, 560 U.S. 305 (2010))
Alito's sparse and snarky concurrence in Samantar: "I join the opinion of the Court, although I think that the citations to legislative history are of little if any value here." Thomas's slightly longer concurrence, with essentially the same complaint as Alito's: "I join the Court's opinion except for those parts relying on the legislative history of the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act of 1976. In my view, the Court's textual analysis is sufficient to resolve this case. See post, at 2293–2294 (Scalia, J., concurring in judgment)." Oh boy it's Scalia's turn to make the exact same point about hating legislative history, but this time in far more words... See opinion for text. Even more Scalia. Nope, he wasn't done yet.
January 3, 2024 at 5:13 PM
hsanderson.bsky.social
Current scene of me grading a student paper that really knocks it out of the park

#AcademicSky #PhDSky
Tom Wambsgams screaming while sitting on top of a filing cabinet, from an episode in "Succession" season 3.
November 14, 2023 at 6:56 PM
hsanderson.bsky.social
Forget girl dinner. Meet✨paper grading lunch✨
An open bag of terra chips and a string cheese propped up against a computer monitor, partially displaying a grading rubric
November 10, 2023 at 9:29 PM
hsanderson.bsky.social
me, 30 minutes ago: If I read another submission without a single citation when the assignment prompt clearly said citations were required and we emphasized this in class, I am going to scream.

me, now:
Screen grab from original "Scream" movie
October 17, 2023 at 10:37 PM
hsanderson.bsky.social
Come work with my department at Berkeley! The dept is currently running a search for a faculty member studying race and law, either lateral or entry level. Application due Nov 1.

Open to Econ, History, PoliSci, Philosophy, Sociology, and related PhDs!

polisky

aprecruit.berkeley.edu/JPF03911
Screenshot of Position Description for race and law faculty in Jurisprudence and Social Policy PhD program at Berkeley. Text available on linked website.
September 29, 2023 at 4:42 PM
hsanderson.bsky.social
Can't quite believe it but my article, "Procedural Sovereign Distinction," is forthcoming in the Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

It asks: What does the treatment of foreign sovereign and foreign private defendants in US courts have to do with sovereignty?
1/4
papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....
Screenshot of article title and abstract. The abstract reads, “U.S. law differentiates between two categories of foreign defendants—sovereign and private. On one level, whether a foreign entity is sovereign determines whether they are presumptively entitled to immunity in domestic courts, and this is justified by the nature of sovereignty as articulated in U.S. and international law. However, different procedural rules also apply to these parties, meaning the “sovereign or not” determination also impacts other rules of the game. This Article proposes conceiving of the ways procedural rules do or do not differ between foreign sovereign and foreign private defendants as “procedural sovereign distinction,” outlining treatment of these defendants across personal jurisdiction, service of process, and injunctive relief. Current procedural sovereign distinction has lost track of the concept of sovereignty, creating a mismatch between the distinction’s justification and the way it is applied.
September 27, 2023 at 3:06 PM
hsanderson.bsky.social
Treating myself to a new 1300-page biography of Spinoza for finishing a big editing task

global.oup.com/academic/pro...
Alexis Rose about to perform an iconic hair flip
September 26, 2023 at 9:10 PM
hsanderson.bsky.social
Counterpoint: What if more analytical jurisprudence?
Somewhat grumpy white and orange cat in a cat bed, presumably pondering the category of legal reasons.
September 19, 2023 at 5:56 PM
hsanderson.bsky.social
What
Listing for Spotify “Indie Folk for Focus” playlist, which lists Johann Sebastian Bach and Yo-Yo Ma as the first two artists included.
September 7, 2023 at 2:20 PM