Search: extraterritorial sanctions

of the President. Congress could also amend IEEPA to give itself more control over the exercise of presidential discretion in imposing sanctions. But no such bill has been proposed. Instead, Congress appears to be one of the biggest fans of the executive use of IEEPA to declare emergencies and impose sanctions and seems to wish it were used even more often. As discussed in the article, U.S. courts also provide no meaningful check on the use of IEEPA-authorized sanctions programs like E.O. 13,382. Under every possible legal theory for challenge,...

...respect of its entire territory.” In fact, this provision and the presumption of the territorial application of treaties appeared to be so commonsensical that some states proposed deleting it from the ILC’s draft articles on the Law of Treaties. Therefore, in order for a treaty to generate extraterritorial obligations it must be shown that either the treaty includes explicit language to that effect or that the treaty’s object and purpose, context, and travaux préparatoires warrant interpreting the treaty as generating extraterritorial obligations. Moreover, since the conclusion of the Genocide Convention,...

jurisdiction over, and to reject a judicially imposed presumption against extraterritoriality to, piracy on foreign ships (which, again, were considered the territories of foreign nations). The ATS contains this same invocation of “the law of nations,” which comprises both substantive and jurisdictional components. That ought to be enough to dispose of the presumption given this precedent. It is also worth mentioning that the Kiobel Court’s assurances that Congress would have included a “clear indication of extraterritoriality” had it wanted the ATS to apply to causes of action arising abroad simply...

particularly strong form of legal imperialism. In some ways then, extraterritoriality in the human rights field seems at its least interesting when discussing the extraterritorial application of treaties. But the topic is a window to a much more touchy topic tied to attempts to promote a new legal orthodoxy that fundamentally refashions international law. My last observation relates to a claim that Marko makes about the reason that issues of extraterritoriality have come to the fore now – a topic that Kal raises in his post too. Marko implies that...

...So there. Let me try to explain why. Professor Besson’s main claim is that prior scholarship on the ECHR’s extraterritorial application, most of it very critical of the European Court’s case law, has not given serious thought to normative considerations that underpin the issue, ‘except for vague and often misleading gestures to the universality of human rights that allegedly requires their extraterritorial application.’ Generally speaking, in Besson’s view that scholarship is under-theorized and the vague references to universality fail to account for the relational nature of rights and obligations under...

...which are not subject to the ATS, providing only that where other claims “touch and concern the territory of the United States, they must do so with sufficient force to displace the presumption against extraterritorial application” (p.14). Despite initial appearances, the ATS has thus not definitively been interpreted to have no extraterritorial effect, but rather, it has only been interpreted as not extending extraterritorially in the circumstances of Kiobel – that is, to purely extraterritorial ‘foreign cubed’ cases. This is not a presumption against any extraterritoriality, but only a presumption...

...and “struck those in the water with ropes” (S.S. para., 11). After seven years of deliberation, the Court found that the standard for extraterritorial jurisdiction was not satisfied and dismissed the case. Lead counsel Violeta Moreno-Lax asserts that to reach this decision the Court winnowed down its jurisdictional jurisprudence so much that the decision “dent[ed] legal certainty, [and] the rule of law grounding the Convention regime.” She concluded that the case rendered the “regime devoid of relevance in migrant rights cases.” Itamar Mann, counsel on the case, echoed this point...

...Portugal and 32 other Council of Europe states. In respect of the latter, their claim was necessarily extraterritorial. While their standing was denied for the reasons outlined above, their bid to expand the Court’s extraterritorial jurisdiction was also rejected.  Under the Convention, the term jurisdiction defines the area in which a State must protect, promote and respect human rights (art. 1). This is usually confined to national borders. The ECtHR has accepted extraterritorial application of the Convention if States hold “effective control over a foreign territory”, or State agents have...

...fix the shortcomings of mutual legal assistance treaties. As Professor Tonya Putnam’s recent book and research show, in the past when courts have rejected government arguments for extending domestic statutes extraterritorially, those refusals have helped fuel U.S. multilateral or bilateral engagement. In contrast, rulings that permits unilateral extraterritorial action create environments where there’s little urgency for the U.S. to find coordinated solutions. The most common result is free-for-alls, where each nation relies on its own piece-meal approach. Not surprisingly then, the reciprocity problem—that other nations would unilaterally try to seize...

...accordingly. The US, the UK, Germany, Japan, France, Australia and Switzerland have imposed sanctions or taken measures against Hamas or individuals associated with it following October 7th, and France has called for EU sanctions on people linked to Hamas and Hezbollah. However, the majority of states have yet to take similar steps. Such measures are also relevant with respect the states that facilitate Hamas and finance its operations, such as Qatar, which hosts Hamas’ leaders, allowing them to evade accountability, and Iran, which funds and arms Hamas. By continuing to...

...sanctions strategy toward proliferation has met with criticism both for doing too little and for going too far. Many would prefer harsher sanctions on Iran in particular. Others worry that freezing assets and blacklisting individuals and entities in this way denies those designated their rights to due process. These sanctions actually strike the correct balance. And attempting to make them multilateral also makes sense—the United States cannot go it alone when confronting the threat of proliferation. The U.S. taking a stand that it will not allow its financial system to...

...Israel – as requested by the governments of Spain and Ireland – with a view to possibly suspending it in whole or in part. The ICJ’s findings authoritatively prove that successive Israeli governments have seriously breached their human rights obligations, which constitute an “essential element” of the agreement. Third, EU governments should suspend arms transfers to Israel given the real risk that the weapons will be used to commit serious abuses, and in compliance with their common position on arms transfers.  Fourth, the EU should adopt targeted sanctions against Israeli officials...