State immunity in international law

For many years, the practice of states was to grant foreign sovereigns absolute 1) …. from the jurisdiction of their courts. This meant that whenever a foreign state was impleaded, or sued, before a national court, it was able to 2) … immunity from the exercise of jurisdiction simply because it was a state. Immunity flowed from its status as a recognised foreign sovereign and there was no inquiry into the substance of the dispute. Neither was there any mitigation of the consequences for the individual litigant. Obviously, such a strict doctrine was capable of causing substantial hardship to individual litigants. They were denied the protection of their own national law, even in the clearest cases of wrongful action by the foreign state. Of course, in many cases, the state would voluntarily 3) … an individual for any loss — in order to prevent friction with the state of nationality — or the state of nationality could take up the matter if it raised an issue of state responsibility. Yet, for the individual there remained the uncertainty and 4) … of dealing with a foreign sovereign state, and when ideological changes and a general expansion in world trade after the First World War caused an increase in direct state 5) … in commercial activities, the doctrine of absolute immunity became too high a price to pay for maintaining a theory about the legal equality of states. The greater involvement of states in ordinary commercial dealings meant that a greater number of individuals fell foul of absolute immunity. More importantly, absolute immunity was becoming counter-productive as those countries which still 6) … to it found themselves facing a decline in their share of world trade because of a failure to safeguard the rights of private citizens and corporations. The result of these changes in the organisation of international commerce, combined with some concern for the rights of the individual, led to the development of the doctrine of restrictive immunity.

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