Legal and Legislative Remedies Against the Chinese Government for Its Handling of COVID-19

The COVID-19 pandemic has come to define a significant portion of life in 2020. Many in the United States put the blame for this global pandemic on the Chinese government for its handling of the virus soon after its discovery. These individuals aim to seek justice against the government through litigation. American legislators have also drafted bills to explicitly allow for such lawsuits. In this project, we examined the legal doctrine of Foreign Sovereign Immunity relating to these lawsuits and explored whether this litigation is possible within the current framework of sovereign immunity. We also explored proposed legislation to amend this framework and its likelihood of being implemented as law. Based upon this research, current law grants very little possibility of a successful lawsuit against the Chinese government for its handling of COVID-19. Furthermore, proposed legislative remedies are unlikely to become law. This project was completed with contributions from Gregory Williams and Shelton Williams from the Osgood Center for Internation Studies.