Search: extraterritorial sanctions

pirates on the high seas, and therefore should apply to modern day analogues to pirates (“Hitler, Inc.”); 2) The ATS was applied extraterritorially in Filartiga or similar cases, and therefore should continue to be read to do so. The second argument doesn’t get you all that far, since the extraterritoriality issues weren’t raised in those cases, or in Sosa. Only the first argument offers a theory of the ATS’ purpose, but that theory fails to draw on actual historical evidence about the ATS. The best evidence is not any case...

...sovereignty as much as a necessary feature of sovereignty—something inherent in the Westphalian system. Bill’s second point builds on his own expertise on statutory extraterritoriality, and I certainly defer to him on the particulars here. He thinks I overstate the motivating role of leveling the playing field for American firms, and slight both the role of consumers and the ways that extraterritorial application sometimes harmed American firms, as in the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. I agree that leveling was not the only factor. I also agree that the FCPA is...

also overcome the presumption in particular ATS cases: “claims that touch and concern the territory of the United States . . . with sufficient force to displace the presumption against extraterritoriality.” The Court’s new presumption—which is, in effect, a “presumption against recognition of extraterritorial causes of action under the ATS”—thus appears to be different from the standard Morrison-style presumption against extraterritoriality in at least three ways: (1) the presumption’s coverage (the new presumption applies narrowly to recognition of extraterritorial causes of action by federal courts under the ATS, whereas the...

short of authorizing the prosecution of acts of piracy or armed robbery in Somalia’s territorial waters. Notwithstanding these provisos, the interest in preventing “unintended clashes between our laws and those of other nations which could result in international discord” (Morrison) that lies at the heart of the presumption against extraterritoriality, is greatly diminished in these piracy cases. Justice Kennedy notes in his concurrence in Kiobel that in disputes not involving solely extraterritorial conduct, “the proper implementation of the presumption against extraterritorial application may require some further elaboration and explanation.” Although...

[Ernesto Hernández-López , is a Professor of Law at the Dale E. Fowler School of Law, Chapman University, in California, United States. He writes about international trade, extraterritoriality, and law and culture. @ProfeErnesto1] The Star Wars universe takes place “a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…,” as it says in the opening screen of the movies. Since they began, the films use international law to emphasize conflict. The first released movie, A New Hope (1977), starts with a captain screaming we are “a consular ship” “on a diplomatic mission,” as he...

Opinio Juris and EJIL: Talk! are happy to announce that over the next few days we will both be hosting a discussion of Marko Milanovic’s recently published book: Extraterritorial Application of Human Rights Treaties: Law, Principles and Policy (Oxford Univ Press). Marko’s book examines the question when a State owes human rights obligations under a treaty to persons located outside its territory. This is a question on which there has been conflicting case law and much confusion. This [book] attempts to clear up some of this confusion, and expose its...

...could hardly have been foreseen when the 1951 Refugee Convention was drafted. The US interdiction program in the 1990s constitutes a prime example. By geographically shifting migration control to block Haitian refugees on the high seas, it was argued that neither US nor international law applied. The majority of the Supreme Court in Sale not only upheld the government’s claim, it set off a proliferation of extraterritorial migration control practices. High sea interdiction programmes have since been introduced both in the Mediterranean and the Pacific. Migration control has further become...

...district courts for money damages in the event of harm to their persons or property when the United States had expressly or implicitly promised the aliens that no such harm would come to them. The ATS both provides a right of action and original jurisdiction in federal district court to aliens injured under circumstances implicating U.S. sovereign responsibility; it is therefore a federal law for purposes of Article III arising-under jurisdiction. Translated to a modern context, the ATS would plausibly be available to “extraterritorial” tort actions by alien detainees at...

...arbitrarily limited in this way, then it invites combatants to use territory outside of the “armed conflict” as a haven. Under some circumstances, for diplomatic or other political reasons, a state might choose not to attack even though participants are taking haven, but the reason is not a matter of the law of war jus in bello. To begin with, this is a caricature of Melzer’s position. He does not claim that combatants can be lawfully targeted only when they are on the battlefield; his discussion of the extraterritorial reach...

...court would be based on extra-territorial jurisdiction. In the event that the ambit of the constitutive facts is understood in this way, not extending to the activities of the Lafarge corporation and its executives initiated in France, this leave open the possibility that defendants would argue for ne bis in idem on those charges.   Alternatively, a French court might consider that its jurisdiction over crimes against humanity is inherently extraterritorial and therefore those charges can be subject to the transnational ne bis in idem principle. This could be the case...

...extraterritoriality, the statute itself “would need to evince a ‘clear indication of extraterritoriality” . . . and surely it’s difficult to read the language of the ATS to draw the sorts of distinctions that would “displace” the presumption in such categories of cases. Moreover, the Court at several places indicates that the question it is addressing is whether causes of action can be brought “for violations of the law of nations occurring abroad.” To be sure, a future court could certainly point to such passages in the Kiobel opinion as...

...a battlefield is, in law, still a law-enforcement space. Part I examined how States have justified and conducted foreign military or law-enforcement interventions against drug cartels, through three distinct legal models: the United States’ claim of extraterritorial self-defense, China’s consent-based cross-border enforcement on the Mekong, and Afghanistan’s joint operations grounded in host-State consent. Part II explores how other States—Colombia, Ecuador, and Mexico—have faced similar dilemmas in classifying drug-related violence. It examines how each has navigated the boundary between organized crime and armed conflict, and what these choices reveal about the...