Professor Dodge files amicus brief with Ninth Circuit

Professor William S. Dodge filed an amicus brief, co-written with Professor Chimène Keitner (UC Hastings), on Dec. 23 on behalf of themselves and Professor Sarah Cleveland (Columbia), with the Ninth Circuit in NSO Group Technologies Ltd. v. WhatsApp Inc. 

WhatsApp sued NSO, an Israeli company, for installing spyware on its users’ phones, and NSO claimed immunity, asserting that it had acted on behalf of undisclosed foreign governments. The amicus brief argues that NSO is not entitled to immunity because the U.S. Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act comprehensively addresses the immunity of corporations from suit in U.S. suit and because only natural persons are entitled to foreign official immunity under federal common law.

Professor Dodge is Martin Luther King Jr. Professor of Law and John D. Ayer Chair in Business Law at UC Davis School of Law. He is a leading expert on international law, international transactions, and international dispute resolution, who served as Counselor on International Law to the Legal Adviser at the U.S. Department of State from 201-12 and as a reporter for the American Law Institute’s Restatement (Fourth) of Foreign Relations Law from 2012 to 2018. Professor Dodge is a co-author of the casebook Transnational Business Problems and a co-editor of International Law in the U.S. Supreme Court: Continuity and Change, which won the American Society of International Law’s 2012 certificate of merit. He has authored more than 60 other publications in books and law reviews.