Sovereign immunity, International Business Disputes, and Judicial Decisions

The empirical analysis is based on an original case-level dataset of 175 judicial decisions drawn from LexisNexis-reported cases between 1987 and 2024. The unit of analysis is the individual judicial decision, which is appropriate because the study examines how courts procedurally allocate cross-border business disputes involving sovereign-linked counterparties. Although the broader retrieval captured a wider universe of transnational litigation, the analytical sample is limited to economically relevant cross-border disputes, including commercial, financial, investment, arbitral, insolvency, and related sovereign-linked business conflicts. The database combines formal case metadata such as court, date, citation, and court level with doctrinal and procedural information extracted from the structured fields of the case reports.

The dataset was then coded into a structured analytical file. Using recurring LexisNexis fields such as procedural posture, overview, and outcome, each case was classified by substantive issue area and key legal characteristics, including foreign-state involvement, sovereign immunity, arbitration, bankruptcy, immigration, family-Hague matters, and trade or customs. The primary judicial disposition reported in each case was coded into four outcome categories: remanded, stayed, dismissed, and a residual base category of other outcomes. In descriptive terms, 44% of the cases fall in the base category, 13% are remanded, 17% are stayed, and 26% are dismissed. Foreign-state involvement appears in 18% of the sample and sovereign immunity in 6%, while arbitration-related disputes account for 38% of the observations.