A US Court Called Maduro an Insurrectionist: Stephen L. Carter

What do you get when you mix $54 million worth of seized crude oil, an alleged insurrection, and a dispute over the legitimacy of the Nicolás Maduro regime in Venezuela? The answer: last week’s somehow overlooked but important decision by the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in a lawsuit between Citgo Petroleum Corp. and its insurer. (For those who guessed “Trump bingo,” no credit — but stay tuned; we’ll get to that later.)

The case begins prosaically. In 2019, Citgo purchased about 939,000 barrels of crude oil from a subsidiary of the Venezuelan state-owned oil company. The oil was loaded ...