Search: extraterritorial sanctions

26 Jan Self-Interest and Compliance

...either had to seek changes to the tax code or face sanctions through the WTO system. The President (and Congress) chose to change the tax code. The cost of non-compliance—trade sanctions with potentially significant economic effects—outweighed the cost of compliance—some companies being upset. These are the “hard cases” when it comes to compliance with international law because the mode of reasoning and decision-making is not primarily legal, but political (or diplomatic). In this form of decision making, the question of compliance is driven by an analysis of power: which is...

26 Mar Does Assad Spouse Have a Right to Keep UK Citizenship?

The Brits are looking to strip Asma al-Assad of her UK citizenship, this in the wake of the imposition of various sanctions on her and family members of other Assad associates. Familial sanctions are an increasingly common practice, on the theory that you really get at the bad guys when you deprive their spouses of shopping trips to world capitals. (In Mrs. Assad’s case, the theory seems pretty plausible, in light of the recent email cache revealing her attention to trivial luxury purchases while Homs burned.) But so long as...

27 Oct If Everyone is Corrupt, Does it Matter that the U.N. is Also Corrupt?

...Oil for Food scandal for the institution’s long-term survival. Petty corruption is one thing, but petty corruption that directly undermines the U.N.’s administration of sanctions against Iraq is quite another. If the U.N. cannot effectively administer sanctions against Iraq without succumbing to rather easy and blatant corruption by an unsavory figure like Saddam Hussein, it is hard to see why the “international community” should “trust” the U.N. to deal effectively with other serious threats to international peace and security. It is also hard to see why, for instance, the U.N.’s...

27 Jun Morrison and the Effects Test

[William S. Dodge is a Professor of Law at the University of California, Hastings College of the Law. One of his articles on extraterritoriality was cited in Justice Stevens’s concurring opinion.] There is no doubt that Morrison v. National Australia Bank is a landmark opinion, not just because the Supreme Court addresses here, for the first time, the extraterritorial reach of U.S. securities law, but also for what the opinion tells us more generally about the presumption against extraterritoriality. As Margaret Sachs has already recounted, the Courts of Appeals, under...

16 Jan Armed Conflict With Al Qaida: A Response

...extraterritorial jurisdiction over many of these individuals or many of their activities." If these individuals did in fact violate the law of war, which is the predicate for a legitimate exercise of jurisdiction by a military commission of the type established by the President, then doesn't the War Crimes Act establish the requisite "extraterritorial" jurisdiction for trial in Federal Court? I recognize that there may be other pragmatic arguments in favor of trial by military commission, but the jurisdictional predicate for use of the War Crimes Act or trial by...

24 May Detention in the News

...vague), then I’m not sure I have any categorical objections (though the devil will be in the details). In all events, the CCR view that somehow this kind of detention is not already authorized by law, and is in some way historically novel – that view is, I believe, wrong. And if litigated, I believe it will lose. The other examples are more complicated. What about the guy who “received extensive explosives training at al Qaeda training camps”? Receiving training at a terrorist camp is now a crime (with extraterritorial...

10 May The Interplay Between Human Rights and Humanitarian Law

...action under humanitarian law would remain unrestricted. It is likely that cases in which the interplay between human rights law and humanitarian law might prove to be important will more and more frequent. For example, the Al-Skeini case, which deals with the extraterritorial application of the ECHR in Iraq, is currently pending before the UK House of Lords. The most enduring quality of the Targeted Killings judgment might actually be that it shows how the relationship between these two branches of international law can be a two-way street, and how...

01 May Was the Kunduz Hospital Attack a War Crime?

...members be prosecuted for intentionally directing an attack against the civilian population because “intentionally” includes lower mental states such as dolus eventualis or recklessness? I worry about this argument. And here’s why. If intent = recklessness, then all cases of legitimate collateral damage would count as violations of the principle of distinction, because in collateral damage cases the attacker kills the civilians with knowledge that the civilians will die. And the rule against disproportionate attacks sanctions this behavior as long as the collateral damage is not disproportionate and the attack...