Search: extraterritorial sanctions

“Does the Constitution Follow the Flag?” is a fascinating book, and one of its great strengths is that it juxtaposes a number of different examples of how law and territory do not align, some of which have been largely forgotten. When most of us think about extraterritoriality, we think of issues like the extraterritorial application of antitrust law, the applicability of the Fourth Amendment to searches in Mexico, or whether detainees at Guantanamo can file habeas petitions. We are less likely to think about Status of Forces Agreements (SOFAs), consular...

...ability (and incentive) to evade constitutional strictures simply by choosing the location of detention. This, of course, was Hugo Black’s prescient concern in his dissent in Johnson v. Eisentrager, the 1950 case that was relied upon so heavily by the Bush Administration in the years after 9/11. Let me also briefly note Bill Dodge’s argument about the rise of effects-based extraterritoriality. The presence of foreign assets in the US is definitely a key factor in the success of this approach, and that presence is in turn a function of the...

Maybe the EU will stick to its guns on its controversial airline emissions tax, but I somehow doubt they will not eventually be forced to cave. (Reuters) – Senate lawmakers and the Obama administration on Wednesday stiffened their opposition to a European law that targets emissions from commercial jetliners and applied new pressure on Brussels and the United Nations to resolve global concerns. In a rare display of election-year bipartisanship, Democratic and Republican members of the Commerce Committee and the administration’s top transportation official called the EU standard...

[Marina Aksenova is a Professor of Comparative Criminal and International Law, IE Law School Madrid and Linde Bryk is Legal Advisor – Bertha Justice Fellow, European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights.] On 11 December 2019, ECCHR together with a group of NGOs – Mwatana (Yemen), Rete Disarmo (Italy), Centre Delàs (Spain), the Campaign Against Arms Trade (UK) and Amnesty International Secretariat – submitted a communication to the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) urging for the opening of a preliminary examination into...

[Gamze Erdem Türkelli is an assistant research professor in international law, human rights and sustainable development at the Law and Development Research Group, University of Antwerp, the principal investigator of the ERC Starting Grant 2023 funded GENESIS project and a member of the Academic Circle on the Right to Development of the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Development.] In the latest of the growing string of climate change litigation against corporations, Hugues Falys, a Belgian farmer is taking TotalEnergies, the number one refiner and distributor...

Chimène Keitner has written a powerful article in ‘Rights Beyond Borders.’ She is right that there have been few comparative discussions of the extraterritorial reach of domestic (constitutional) protections of individual rights. Her piece goes a long way towards filling that gap. I am in complete agreement with Chimène that there is much to be learned from such a comparative examination. Judges in a number of countries are now increasingly faced with cases arising from extraterritorial situations, and their approaches in dealing with them are remarkably similar. This is even...

Kevin earlier today asked about the extraterritorial reach of human rights treaties. But, what about U.S. statutes – how far do they reach? What exactly constitutes an extraterritorial application of U.S. law? On July 6, the Ninth Circuit addressed this issue in Pakootas v. Teck Cominco Metals, Ltd. (see here). The Ninth Circuit ruled that “slag” metal discharges from Teck Cominco’s smelter in Trail, British Columbia, which had traveled down the Columbia River and come to rest within U.S. territory, were subject to regulation under the U.S. Superfund statute –...

...Chinese shipowners in China, provided they have adopted domestic legislation capable of grounding such claims. This also underscores the duty of those states to protect human rights at sea by regulating the extraterritorial conduct of these companies. Some Preliminary Observations The Akhmad, et. al v. Bumble Bee Foods case is, at its core, a test of home state extraterritorial jurisdiction. That the case is being litigated at all is a significant contribution to the issue of remedy for forced labour aboard foreign vessels operating beyond any territorial jurisdiction. While it...

to pages 17-24 of the Morrison slip opinion. That section of Morrison clearly addresses the question of conduct that partly occurs abroad and partly occurs at home. Here’s a few choice excerpts from the relevant section of Morrison: [I]t is a rare case of prohibited extraterritorial application that lacks all contact with the territory of the United States. But the presumption against extraterritorial application would be a craven watchdog indeed if it retreated to its kennel whenever some domestic activity is involved in the case… “[W]e think that the focus...

...a comprehensive solution to the dispute over Iran’s nuclear programme for which the comprehensive lifting of nuclear-related sanctions, including international and national sanctions, was an essential part, as stated in the Joint Plan of Action of E3/EU+3 and Iran issued on 24.11.2013. Thus, it cannot be argued that no state except Iran has hard law obligation in implementing the Resolution. In light of this, the recent decision of the United States to withdraw from this agreement and the measures it has taken to defy the implementation of the Resolution, by...

...are now left with a situation where the big sanctions, oil and gas, are still on the table but because of the level of dependency, there is real hesitation, in, for example, Berlin, doing anything about this. Why? Because of, simply, worry that the German economy will take too much of a further hit. Of course, sanctions always hurt the other side, but they also hurt the sanctioning side. What I see in Berlin at the moment is a very weak Coalition, a three-party coalition, and an extraordinarily weak Chancellor....

...14 October 2020, I filed final submissions to the UN Human Rights Committee (UNHRC) in the long-running Baltasar Garzón v. Spain case, which challenges the prosecution of a judge for his judicial decisions. As the Garzón case epitomizes a number of rule of law challenges of current global concern, including those in the Special Rapporteur’s report, this piece offers a few reflections on the correlation between the case and the report. The UN Special Rapporteur’s report makes clear that sanctions against judges take many forms. They may be civil, criminal...