The "Necessity" Defense in Sovereign Debt Cases

My international debt class this week discussed the US Supreme Court’s gold clause decisions from 1935; and, in particular, US v. Perry. This is one of my favorite topics, in part because the events that occurred are so surprising to most students (as they were to me). Plus, there is some wonderful writing on the topic including a 2013 law review article by Indiana U Law School’s Gerard Magliocca (here) and a 2018 book by UCLA Economic Historian Sebastian Edwards (here).

For those who don’t know this case, basically the US imposed a massive haircut on its lenders by abrogating the gold clauses in its debt contracts via Congressional action in 1933.  Creditors yelled bloody murder and sued, and the case quickly made its way to SCOTUS.  There, the government, which didn’t have very many strong legal arguments on its side, threw itself at the court’s mercy and pled that the court deny the creditors’ claims on public policy grounds. That is, that the country was in such a deep crisis – arguably the worst it had ever seen – that extreme steps (such as the abrogation of a contract term) needed to be taken to improve general welfare.  It was a Hail Mary pass, and it worked even though the justices had to hold their noses and rule.  The Court ruled in a somewhat bizarre fashion, finding a constitutional violation but no damages.  The bottom line though was that the government won.  Better still, the US economy recovered and lenders became even more eager to lend to the US than they were before. (see here and here).

The question raised by Edwards and Magliocca though is whether we might see the use of this extreme necessity defense ever again.  And it turns out that there is a sovereign debt case going on right now, in January 2020, in a federal court in New York, where necessity is being raised as a defense. The country in question is Venezuela and the conditions surrounding Venezuela’s inability to pay are as extreme as they come (evil dictator, deep humanitarian crisis, broke government-in-exile stuck dealing with myriad lawsuits). The case is Casa Express Corp. v. Venezuela (Case 1:18-cv-11940-AT).  Question is whether, given that the crisis is occurring in a distant country as opposed to the US itself, the US federal court will find the appeal to “necessity” convincing in the same way that they did in 1935. (Venezuela is asking for a lot less relief in this case than the US was in 1935; Venezuela just wants a stay until Mr. Maduro can be induced to leave office and the IMF can help it prepare to deal with creditor claims).

As an aside, there was no discussion of an explicit “necessity” defense in the briefs in the gold clauses cases in 1935 (which is perhaps why Venezuela’s brief in the Casa Express case does not cite them).  Although the Attorney General's argument there very much sounded like a plea on the basis of necessity.  Venezuela, however, has invoked Customary International Law, which explicitly has in it a necessity defense.  I’m no expert on international law, but my impression is that this is an obscure and rarely used defense.  Still, it seems applicable to the situation.  A threshold question for the judge to consider probably will be whether CIL applies in the context of a NY law governed contract.  

My sympathies are with the Guaido legal team defending this case. But sympathy may not enough here.  Now, if the State Department were to put in an appearance on behalf of the Venezuelan people, that might sway things.