Search: extraterritorial sanctions

[Tomas Hamilton is an Assistant Professor in International Criminal Law at the University of Amsterdam. Marina Aksenova is an Assistant Professor in International and Comparative Criminal Law at IE University in Madrid.] In the ongoing civil suits in Mexico v Smith & Wesson & others and Mexico v Diamondback Shooting Sports Inc. et al, the Mexican government has brought claims against US gun manufacturers in Massachusetts and gun dealers in Arizona for extraterritorial harms suffered by the Mexican State in the context of cartel violence. The US district court judge...

...States.” The most important consequence of pure sovereignty is that it prohibits states from engaging in extraterritorial cyber-espionage. The Tallinn Manual 2.0 claims that because international law does not regulate such espionage in the physical realm, it does not regulate it in the cyber one. Most scholars take the same position. Russell Buchan and I, however, have argued precisely the opposite — that international law prohibits extraterritorial espionage in both the physical and cyber realms. We now have 55 more states that agree with us. The African Union’s communique is...

...acquiesce lightly to the extraterritorial jurisdiction of Israeli military and civilian courts in the West Bank. Against the backdrop of the current Israeli administration’s intention to annex large swathes of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, the de facto exercise of Israel’s extraterritorial jurisdiction is gradually absorbing Palestinian land within the Israeli state; if this remains unchallenged, the process of conquest through an expansion of jurisdiction could become irreversible, clearly contravening international law.   Taking the example of Israeli settlements in occupied Palestine (which are a “flagrant violation under international...

...reach. The Supreme Court’s decision in Morrison v. National Australia Bank, 130 S. Ct. 2869 (2010), confirms the distinction between substantive statutes to which the presumption against extraterritoriality applies and jurisdictional statutes to which it does not. In Morrison, the Court used the presumption to limit a substantive provision of the Securities Exchange Act, finding “no affirmative indication in the Exchange Act that § 10(b) applies extraterritorially.” Id. at 2883. But notably, the Court did not apply the presumption against extraterritoriality to the Exchange Act’s jurisdictional provision. To the contrary,...

As the Court put it in Bowman, “Congress has not thought it necessary to make specific provision in the law that the locus shall include the high seas and foreign countries, but allows it to be inferred from the nature of the offense.” Here’s a brief excerpt of my Chapter 8 addressing the “government purpose” test that presumes the extraterritorial application of U.S. law: The Bowman Court concluded that “the same rule of interpretation [against extraterritoriality] should not be applied to criminal statutes which are … not logically dependent on...

...and seek justice. However, to open the Cause, Argentina had to resolve several preliminary issues: the characterization of the crimes, the prevalence of Spanish courts’ jurisdiction, and the possibility to prosecute the crimes according to domestic law. In this regard, Argentina stated that the facts constituted international crimes covered by the principle of universal jurisdiction. It established that no investigation was being carried out in Spain for the same facts or crimes; thus, other countries could prosecute those responsible. It explained the need for extraterritorial jurisdiction, referring to the obligations...

...States does not accept the extraterritorial application of the canonical human rights treaties with respect to its own conduct and those of its agents outside of the territorial United States, so from the US point of view, that distinction is legally neither here nor there. In order to give the geographical distinction content, Koh’s argument says not that human rights law applies with respect to the US, but instead that the requirements of self-defense independently require an imminence of threat analysis even within an armed conflict that includes AQAP as...

...those whose lives it claims to improve. Nor does it comply with international law. Foreign investment is subject to states’ international legal obligations. States – including the U.S. – have extraterritorial obligations that require them to respect and protect economic, social and cultural rights abroad and to take “joint and separate action” to achieve respect for, and observance of, universal human rights. The latter obligation is widely understood to confer on states, particularly those in the global north, a duty to ensure that international assistance is provided in accordance with...

...Post Facto Clause of the U.S. Constitution that it prohibits prosecutions for actions that were not criminal at the time they were taken. The application of the Ex Post Facto Clause is especially noteworthy here because it had been something of a question whether the U.S. Constitution (other than the Suspension Clause the Supreme Court recognized guaranteed the Guantanamo Bay detainees a constitutional right to seek a writ of habeas corpus) applied to non-citizens held at Guantanamo Bay. While stopping short of answering the question of extraterritorial application directly, the...

...any other way contribute to the commission or attempted commission” of a war crime. Article 25(d) (emphasis mine). For these reasons, there appears to be an open question regarding whether international law permits the use of the other domestic modes of inchoate criminal liability to punish non-nationals for extraterritorial violations of the law of war. Exploring this rather complex issue requires retracing the origins of law of war violations and their punishment. States have punished law of war violations by adversaries and their sympathizers since long before there were international...

was too “deficient and vague” to be a common law rule. Lower courts have discussed the application of the Alien Tort Statute to so-called “foreign cubed” cases – where the parties are foreigners and the conduct takes place abroad – as a matter of extraterritoriality, a term that suggests the presumption of statutory construction against extraterritorial application. While there is a presumption against extraterritoriality, the application of U.S. law to conduct abroad is not uncommon. Yet even the most controversial or aggressive use of extraterritoriality typically involves the regulation of...

...Syrian conflict – the opportunities have been scant to date. The majority of suspected IS members brought to justice have been tried on terrorism-related charges that have not surfaced any ICHL violations, including sexual or gender-based harms, for which an accused may bear criminal responsibility. This is largely true of prosecutions both in Iraq and in other states exercising extraterritorial or universal jurisdiction. However, a growing number of cases focusing on ICHL violations are being built in these third states against IS members and other actors in the Syrian conflict....