Republic of Sudan v. Harrison
The Supreme Court ruled that suing a foreign government under U.S. law requires mailing the legal papers directly to the foreign minister's office in that country, not to the country's embassy in Washington.
The decision throws out a $314 million default judgment against Sudan over the USS Cole bombing because the victims' lawyers had mailed the service papers to Sudan's embassy rather than to its foreign ministry in Khartoum.
How it got here: A district court entered a default judgment against Sudan and later ordered banks to turn over assets; Sudan appealed those orders, the Second Circuit affirmed, and the Supreme Court took the case.
The Case in Depth
What happened
Victims of the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen, and their families, sued Sudan, claiming it had supported al Qaeda in planning the attack. When Sudan did not respond, a federal court entered a $314 million default judgment against it. The victims then tried to collect by having banks holding Sudanese assets turn the money over to satisfy the judgment.
The question before the Court
Can a lawsuit against a foreign country under U.S. law be properly started by mailing legal papers to that country's embassy in Washington, instead of to its foreign minister's office back home?
The Court's answer
No — the Supreme Court ruled that mailing legal papers to a foreign country's embassy in Washington does not satisfy the law's requirement. The statute says papers must be "addressed and dispatched" to the head of the foreign ministry, and the Court read that to mean the papers must go directly to the minister's own office in that country, not to an embassy that might simply forward them along.
Because the USS Cole victims had mailed their service papers to Sudan's embassy rather than to its foreign ministry in Khartoum, the resulting default judgment was invalid for lack of proper service. The Court reversed the lower courts' rulings and sent the case back, noting the victims could try serving Sudan again correctly, or use a backup method of routing papers through the U.S. State Department.
Curious how the Court got there? See the step-by-step legal reasoning →
Why it matters
People suing foreign governments in U.S. courts under this law must now redo or rethink how they deliver legal papers, sending them to the foreign ministry itself rather than the easier option of a Washington embassy. This makes it harder and slower to sue foreign states, and it revives questions for other pending cases, including the Cole bombing victims' decade-old judgment against Sudan.
What changes now
The case returns to the lower courts, where the victims' judgment against Sudan is no longer valid because service was improper. The opinion notes the victims can try mailing service again correctly to Sudan's foreign minister, and if that fails within 30 days, use the fallback method of routing papers through the U.S. Secretary of State to Sudan's government. This is a final merits ruling on the service question, not an emergency or temporary order.
What this does not decide
The Court did not decide whether embassies are protected from receiving mail under the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, nor whether Sudan's embassy actually received or could have forwarded the papers. It also left open how future service attempts to Sudan's foreign ministry, or fallback service through the State Department, would play out.
Concurrences and dissents
Dissent — Justice Thomas
“Because there is no evidence in this case suggesting that Sudan’s Embassy declined the service packet addressed to its foreign minister—as it was free to do—I would hold that respondents complied with the FSIA”Thomas's argument that mailing to the embassy should have counted as valid service.
Justice Thomas argued that the statute only requires that service be addressed and dispatched to the foreign minister as a person, not to any particular physical location, and that nothing in the text bars using an embassy address. He reasoned that embassies function as direct communication channels to home governments, and since Sudan's embassy accepted the mailing and never rejected it, service should be considered valid. He would have affirmed the judgment for the victims.
How the Court got there
The legal reasoning, step by step
- The Court focused on the ordinary meaning of the words 'addressed' and 'dispatched' in the mailing statute, reasoning that a mailing is 'addressed' to someone's actual residence or usual workplace, and an embassy is neither the home nor the customary office of a foreign minister.
- The Court found that to 'dispatch' something means to send it directly to where the person can usually be found, not through a third party who might merely forward it along, drawing on everyday examples like mailing a letter to a company's headquarters rather than one of its retail stores.
- Comparing this mailing method to a neighboring provision governing service on foreign agencies, the Court noted that Congress used broader 'actual notice' language there but left it out of the provision at issue, showing Congress did not intend the same relaxed standard here.
- The Court also compared this provision to another part of the law that lets a foreign entity be served through a designated agent in the United States, finding that Congress could have written similar agent language into the minister-mailing provision but chose not to.
- Looking at the rules for deciding when service legally takes effect, the Court reasoned that requiring the mailing to go to the minister's own office—rather than an embassy mailroom—better matches Congress's assumption that whoever signs for the mail is equipped to act on it promptly.
- The Court concluded that reading the statute this way avoids putting foreign governments in a worse position than ordinary people served under general federal court rules, and avoids conflict with the State Department's long-held view that entering embassies to deliver such papers raises diplomatic concerns.