Clauses · FAR · Administration and definitions
FAR 52.233-4 Applicable Law for Breach of Contract Claim
Does the regulation require it to flow down?
No
No mandate: one sentence, no subcontract paragraph, and 33.215(b) says nothing about subcontracts. Primes carry it in the disputes block next to 52.233-1 and 52.233-3 — GDMS's July-2026 fixed-price and T&M templates and the LMI/Applied DNA subcontract all do exactly that. Flowed down on its own it does no work: the governing law of your subcontract is set by the prime's own choice-of-law and forum paragraph, which almost always names a specific state (Maryland, Virginia, Texas, New York are the common picks in this corpus's templates). The clause is useful to a sub mainly as a signal that the chain is US-law-governed end to end.
A clause can reach your subcontract without a mandate. Once it is in your document, it is a contract term all the same. The missing mandate is a fact about the regulation. It is not a ruling on your order.
Checked against acquisition.gov on 2026-08-05 · edition OCT 2004 · base v0.9.3 Read the text ↗
What it makes you produce
One item for your checklist.
Nothing to send, ever
There is no paperwork here. It is a rule you follow while you perform the work.
Nothing to hand over. One sentence: United States law applies to resolve a claim of breach of the contract
FAR 52.233-4
When it is used
FAR 33.215(b), in full: 'Insert the clause at 52.233-4 in all solicitations and contracts.' No dollar threshold, no contract-type restriction, no commercial or COTS carve-out, and — unlike 33.215(a) for the Disputes clause — no 33.203(b) exception for foreign governments or international organizations. The clause text is a single sentence: 'United States law will apply to resolve any claim of breach of this contract.'
Read closely
The governing law of your own order is set by the prime's choice-of-law and forum paragraph, not by this clause, and where your quoted terms name a foreign law or arbitration seat the order-of-precedence paragraph in the same template decides between them.
The 2 templates that name it, with the line
Source: acquisition.gov, FAR 52.233-4 and FAR 33.215(b); federalregister.gov API document 2026-12559 for the Part 33 proposed rule (verified 2026-08-05)
This is research, not legal advice. It states what the regulation says about this clause and cites the paragraph behind it. It does not rule on your order, and it does not rule on whether a prime's markings are correct.