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ANIMAL SCIENCE PRODUCTS, INC. v. 
HEBEI WELCOME PHARMACEUTICAL CO. 
Syllabus 

was then tried to a jury,  which returned a verdict for the U. S. pur-
chasers. 
  The Second Circuit reversed, holding that the District Court erred 
by  denying  the  Chinese  sellers’  motion  to  dismiss  the  complaint.  
When a foreign government whose law is in contention submits an of-
ficial  statement  on  the  meaning  and  interpretation  of  its  domestic 
law,  the  court  concluded,  federal  courts  are  “bound  to  defer”  to  the 
foreign government’s construction of its own law, whenever that con-
struction is “reasonable.”  Inspecting only the Ministry’s brief and the 
sources  cited  therein,  the  court  found  the  Ministry’s  account  of  Chi-
nese law “reasonable.” 

Held: A  federal  court  determining  foreign  law  under  Federal  Rule  of 
Civil  Procedure  44.1  should  accord  respectful  consideration  to  a  for-
eign  government’s  submission,  but  the  court  is  not  bound  to  accord 
conclusive effect to the foreign government’s statements. 
  Rule 44.1 fundamentally changed the mode of determining foreign 
law in federal courts.  Before  adoption of the rule in 1966, a foreign 
nation’s laws had to be “proved as facts.”  Talbot v. Seeman, 1 Cranch 
1, 38.  Rule 44.1, in contrast, specifies that a court’s determination of 
foreign law “must be treated as a ruling on a question of law.”  And in 
ascertaining foreign law, courts are not limited to materials submit-
ted  by  the  parties,  but  “may  consider  any  relevant  material  or 
source.”  Appellate review, as is true of domestic law determinations, 
is de novo.  The purpose of these changes was to align, to the extent 
possible, the process for determining alien law and the process for de-
termining domestic law. 
  Neither  Rule  44.1  nor  any  other  rule  or  statute  addresses  the 
weight  a  federal  court  determining  foreign  law  should  give  to  the 
views  presented  by  a  foreign  government.    In  the  spirit  of  “interna-
tional  comity,”  Société  Nationale  Industrielle  Aérospatiale  v.  United 
States Dist. Court for Southern Dist. of Iowa, 482 U. S. 522, 543, and 
n. 27, a federal court should carefully consider a foreign state’s views 
about the meaning of its own laws.  The appropriate weight in each 
case, however, will depend upon the circumstances; a federal court is 
neither bound to adopt the foreign government’s characterization nor 
required  to  ignore  other  relevant  materials.    No  single  formula  or 
rule  will  fit  all  cases,  but  relevant  considerations  include  the  state-
ment’s  clarity,  thoroughness,  and  support;  its  context  and  purpose; 
the transparency of the foreign legal system; the role and authority of 
the entity or official offering the statement; and the statement’s con-
sistency with the foreign government’s past positions. 
  Judged in this light, the Second Circuit’s unyielding rule is incon-
sistent  with  Rule  44.1  and,  tellingly,  with  this  Court’s  treatment  of 
analogous submissions from States of the United States.  If the rele-