Professor Dodge Quoted on Mexico's Guns Lawsuit

On Aug. 23, Professor William S. Dodge was quoted in The Trace, which covers gun violence, about the potential immunity of U.S. gun manufacturers in a lawsuit brought by Mexico. The suit filed in federal court in Massachusetts alleges that U.S. companies design and sell guns in ways they know arm Mexican drug cartels. The gun manufacturers are expected to argue that they are immune under a 2005 law known as PLCCA. Dodge and Professor Ingrid Wuerth (Vanderbilt) analyzed PLCCA in a blog post and concluded that it does not apply to claims under Mexican law. In an interview with The Trace, Dodge speculated that Congress might not want to immunize gun makers from liability for arming Mexican cartels since these cartels bring drugs to the United States.

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 2011-12 and as a reporter for the American Law Institute’s Restatement (Fourth) of Foreign Relations Law from 2012-18. Professor Dodge is a co-author of Transnational Business Problems and Transnational Litigation in a Nutshell, 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.