Foreign Law Interpretations in U.S. Domestic Courts

What Weight or Deference?

By Daniel J. Martucci

Dan Martucci received his J.D. from Albany Law School in 2020. He is a 2016 graduate of the State University of New York, College at Brockport, where he majored in Political Science. While studying at SUNY Brockport, Dan served as President of the school’s European Union Simulation team, where students traveled both nationally and internationally to compete.

While at Albany, Dan served as Albany Law Review’s Executive Editor for Coordinating and Operations. Dan was also the recipient of the Best Brief award for the Gabrielli Appellate Advocacy Moot Court Competition.

Prior to joining the Albany law firm of O’Connor First, Dan gained experience in a number of practice areas including business and corporate, cyber security and data privacy, as well as the judiciary when he participated in the field placement program at the New York State Supreme Court, Appellate Division, Third Department.

In an increasingly globalized economy, conflict between domestic and foreign law is inevitable.  To resolve such conflict, U.S. courts look to a variety of sources of law, including foreign governments and foreign courts interpretations of their own law.  Until recently, circuit courts were divided on the level of deference that should be given to these interpretations.  The Supreme Court addressed this, though only partially, with Animal Science Products v. Heibei Welcome Pharmaceutical Company.

To start, by way of analogy, if a U.S. state’s Attorney General gives an opinion on their state’s law, the federal courts are not required to give that consideration controlling weight in their decision.   However, if a state’s highest court has decided an issue, the federal courts are bound to defer to that decision. This particular scenario was not answered by the case and presents an interesting issue.  Instinctively, it seems that the analogy should follow; judges of a state’s (or foreign country’s) highest court are best equipped to determine what the law means.

Whether or not the framework above may be applied partially relies on the concept of international comity, which governs international law and judgments from foreign courts vis-à-vis their weight in U.S. courts. This paper will discuss the relevant unilateralist, universalist, and multilateralist theories, analyze antitrust concepts applicable to that discussion, and explore the way the Supreme Court should address foreign high court interpretations, foreign executive agency interpretations, and authority under international treaties.

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To read the paper, open HERE.