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10 

ANIMAL SCIENCE PRODUCTS, INC. v. 
HEBEI WELCOME PHARMACEUTICAL CO. 
Opinion of the Court 

including, for example, China’s statement to the WTO that 
China  had  “g[i]ve[n]  up  export  administration . . .  of  vita-
min C” at the end of 2001.  810 F. Supp. 2d, at 532 (inter-
nal quotation marks omitted).5 
  The  Court  of  Appeals  also  misperceived  this  Court’s 
decision  in  United  States  v.  Pink,  315  U. S.  203  (1942).  
See  837  F. 3d,  at  186–187,  189.    Pink,  properly  compre-
hended,  is  not  compelling  authority  for  the  attribution  of 
controlling  weight  to  the  Ministry’s  brief.    We  note,  first, 
that  Pink  was  a  pre-Rule  44.1  decision.    Second,  Pink 
arose  in  unusual  circumstances.    Pink  was  an  action 
brought by the United States to recover assets of the U. S. 
branch  of  a  Russian  insurance  company  that  had  been 
nationalized  in  1918,  after  the  Russian  revolution.    315 
U. S.,  at  210–211.    In  1933,  the  Soviet  Government  as-
signed  the  nationalized  assets  located  in  this  country  to 
the United States.  Id., at 211–212.  The disposition of the 
case  turned  on  the  extraterritorial  effect  of  the  nationali-
zation  decree—specifically,  whether  the  decree  reached 
assets  of  the  Russian  insurance  company  located  in  the 
United  States,  or was  instead  limited  to  property  in  Rus-
sia.  Id., at 213–215, 217.  To support the position that the 
decree  reached  all  of  the  company’s  assets,  the  United 
States obtained an “official declaration of the Commissar-
iat  for  Justice”  of  the  Russian  Socialist  Federal  Soviet 
Republic.    Id.,  at  218.    The  declaration  certified  that  the 
nationalization decree reached “the funds and property of 
former  insurance  companies  . . .  irrespective  of  whether 
[they  were]  situated  within  the  territorial  limits  of  [Rus-

—————— 

5 The  Court  of  Appeals  additionally  mischaracterized  the  Ministry’s 
brief as a “sworn evidentiary proffer.”  837 F. 3d, at 189.  In so describ-
ing  the  Ministry’s  submission,  the  Court  of  Appeals  overlooked  that  a 
court’s resolution of an issue of foreign law “must be treated as a ruling 
on a question of law.”  Fed. Rule Civ. Proc. 44.1.  The Ministry’s brief, 
while  a  probative  source  for  resolving  the  legal  question  at  hand,  was 
not an attestation to facts.