Central Banks, Executive Power, and Protecting Sovereign Assets

Central banks are a bit of a problem for the law of foreign sovereign immunity. From one perspective, they look like commercial actors, and sovereign immunity generally doesn’t protect commercial acts. So it would seem that a sovereign’s creditors should be able to attach central bank assets. Many have tried. But from another perspective, central banking is a quintessential government function, which the law of sovereign immunity should protect. Ingrid Wuerth (Vanderbilt) is an expert in the law of foreign sovereign immunity, and in international law in general, and joins us to talk about the protections afforded to central banks. Bonus discussion of the President’s power to unilaterally block creditors from going after a foreign sovereign’s U.S.-based assets.

The paper mentioned in this episode can be found here: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3125048

Producer: Leanna Doty