Republic of Sudan v. Harrison

Republic of Sudan v. Harrison
Supreme Court of the United States
Argued November 7, 2018 Decided March 26, 2019
Full case name	Republic of Sudan v. Rick Harrison
Docket no.	16-1094
Citations	587 U.S. ___ (more) 139 S. Ct. 1048; 203 L. Ed. 2d 433
Case history
Prior	Harrison v. Republic of Sudan, 802 F.3d 399 (2d Cir. 2015); rehearing denied, 838 F.3d 86 (2d Cir. 2016); cert. granted, 138 S. Ct. 2671 (2018).
Holding
Under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, civil complaints and summons must be served directly to the foreign minister's office in the minister's home country, not to their home country's embassy within the United States.
Court membership
Chief Justice John Roberts Associate Justices Clarence Thomas · Ruth Bader Ginsburg Stephen Breyer · Samuel Alito Sonia Sotomayor · Elena Kagan Neil Gorsuch · Brett Kavanaugh
Case opinions
Majority	Alito, joined by Roberts, Breyer, Ginsburg, Gorsuch, Kagan, Kavanaugh, Sotomayor
Dissent	Thomas
Laws applied
Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act

Republic of Sudan v. Harrison, 587 U.S. ___ (2019), was a United States Supreme Court case from the October 2018 term. The Court held that civil service of a lawsuit against the government of Sudan was invalid because the civil complaints and summons had been sent to the Embassy of Sudan in Washington, D.C. rather than to the Sudanese Foreign Minister in Khartoum.

This case is notable because it arose out of the bombing of the USS Cole, a terrorist attack perpetrated by Al-Qaeda in 2000.^[1] The United States federal government's decision to file a friend of the court brief supporting Sudan against a lawsuit filed by injured United States service members also sparked controversy.^[2] The administration's amicus curiae brief condemned the terrorist attack but argued that allowing service of process at embassies would undermine the principle of mission inviolability.^[3]