Given that modern sovereign bonds usually contain the choice of forum clause designating domestic courts to enforce the contractual terms of such instruments, sovereign immunities are among the foremost options for debtor sovereigns to forestall bondholder litigation. This study has concluded that contractual arrangements and statutory provisions on the waiver of immunities represent a fair balance between bondholders’ access to judicial remedies and respect for sovereign debt restructuring. In general, the broad waiver of jurisdictional immunity maintains the option for a holdout, whereas immunity from measures of constraint may prevent eventual enforcement against the assets held by defaulting sovereigns. Such a consequence does not unduly undermine the interests of bondholders, insofar as holdout strategies are envisaged in practice to gain leverage in a debt restructuring negotiation rather than to enforce contractual rights through litigation. In addition, an option of a stay of proceedings available in some jurisdictions may provide a basis for the courts to indirectly regulate the progress of sovereign debt restructuring by imposing and lifting a stay of proceedings.

The next battleground involves the admissibility of sovereign bond claims in investment treaty arbitration, which emerges as a complicated issue particularly when a large group of bondholders bring a case as a bundle against the debtor sovereign. To attain an appropriate balance between bondholder protection and respect for orderly debt restructuring, this study has conceptualised investment arbitration proceedings as a supplemental leverage available for bondholders as a group by which a stay of arbitral proceedings is imposed and lifted amid the fair progress of sovereign debt restructuring processes.

Remedies in the criminal process are the most frequently awarded remedies. Part I outlines existing practices in international and select domestic courts. International criminal courts have more experience using alternatives to stays of proceedings or exclusion of evidence by awarding sentence reductions or damage awards, including for crime victims. Domestic courts often balance competing interests before ordering stays or excluding evidence but often not in a transparent or disciplined manner. Part II suggests that rather than relying on vague concepts of judicial integrity, courts should require the state to justify restrictions on remedies through proportionality reasoning. This should be based on legitimate state objectives, not including the seriousness of the offence charged but that does include the seriousness of the violation. Part III applies the two-track approach and argues that courts, subject to proportionality constraints, should focus on compensating for violations. This make sense of individualistic standing and causation requirements. Individual and systemic tracks are not watertight compartments. The court should consider whether the state has responded reasonably to the violation, including with respect to police training and discipline. Domestic courts should be more attentive to repetitive violations and the need to respond with cycles of individual and systemic remedies.

Rather than treating second-order reasons for deference as conclusive, the adjudicator could instead treat them as suspensive. Adjudicators adopt a suspensive view of domestic authority in the modes of deferral and abstention. Adjudicators adopting this view of authority refer to second order reasons for deference to justify not engaging with certain matters for a period of time (deferral) or at all (abstention). In both modes, domestic decisions are not endorsed. The adjudicator instead declines to exercise its own decision making authority in favour of the exercise of domestic decision-making authority. This is a form of ‘passive’ judicial participation. In these modes, deference is displayed by the adjudicator refraining from exercising its decision-making authority in preference to the decision-making authority of a domestic actor. The adjudicator does by declining to determine a dispute, or a particular matter in dispute, until a domestic decision maker has had an opportunity to make a decision relevant to the case (deferral) or at all (abstention).