In association with the International Commission of Jurists

Search: extraterritorial sanctions

29 Jul

...Guantanamo are serving any of these purposes. To the extent they may be justified in this context at all, it is as the only forum in which it is possible to charge violations of the law of war – either because there is no relevant charging offense under federal criminal law, or because federal criminal law did not at the time extend to cover extraterritorial offenses. I suppose other justifications might be offered, and I’d be happy to have them. But I doubt the we-can’t-win-under-the-evidentiary-standards-in-Article-III-court rationale is one of them....
29.07.09 | |

14 Dec

...of the actor, the nature of the recipient(s), and the nature of the information. If the intent to harm a nation's security interests is present, I have trouble accepting an argument that potential criminal culpability should stop with the first non-citizen or non-government employee who receives (rather than extracts) and then further discloses a government's secrets. Of course, the biggest obstacle to prosecuting a violation of an extraterritorially applied domestic law is the lack of legitimate extraterritorial enforcement power. Merely having an applicable law on the books does not automatically...
14.12.10 | |

18 Jan

...similar jurisprudence on the basis that the European Convention has a different scope of application provision than does the ICCPR. This is a reference to the old saw, also dismissed by the HR Committee, that the ICCPR has no extraterritorial application. But note that even if that were true, it would not be cause to deny complementarity between IHRL and IHL; it would only be cause to deny that a State has IHRL obligations when it, say, tortures people in wars on foreign lands, a position that, by the way,...
18.01.12 | |

14 Dec

...of any prescription drug without a valid prescription was prohibited in baseball, and even earlier under federal law. In 1971, baseball’s drug policy required compliance with federal, state, and local drug laws and directed baseball’s athletic trainers that anabolic steroids should only be provided to players under a physician’s guidance. Problem is, under traditional rules of extraterritoriality, the federal regulation of the use of performance enhancing substances does not obviously apply when such use occurs in other countries. And various sections of the Mitchell Report detail allegations of “illegal” use...
14.12.07 | |

03 Jan

The Guardian published an editorial by a Republican political operative today blaming WikiLeaks for releasing a State Department cable concerning a meeting between Tsvangirai and Susan Rice in which Tsvangirai discussed the possibility of peacefully removing Mugabe from power: Now, in the wake of the WikiLeaks’ release, one of the men targeted by US and EU travel and asset freezes, Mugabe’s appointed attorney general, has launched a probe to investigate Tsvangirai’s involvement in sustained western sanctions. If found guilty, Tsvangirai will face the death penalty. And so, where Mugabe’s strong-arming,...
03.01.11 | |

31 Jul

...Where the tension does come to a head, the government is faced with the obligation to either give up on its secrecy interests or else face sanctions (including the dismissal of charges). This is the prospect that we have to be worried about insofar as we push more of the burden of terrorism detention into the criminal justice system. It may be that the problem won’t actually arise often, or even at all. Or it may prove a huge obstacle in some cases. I don’t think any of us are...
31.07.08 | |

04 May

...chilling conclusion that the whole world has become a battlefield. It implicates that AQ-operatives may be liable to similar deadly attacks wherever they are hiding (ok, this time it was Abottabad and the Pakistani government seems to turn the other cheek, but what’s next: Paris? Rome?). I prefer the following (extraterritorial law enforcement) approach: without the obtaining of Pakistani consent, the only reasonable justification the US could put forward for infringing another Sate’s sovereignty, is the right to self-defence (art 51 UN Charter). Apparently, the US had actionable intelligence that...
04.05.11 | |

27 Mar

[Eugene Kontorovich is a Professor of Law at Northwestern School of Law] The extraterritoriality analysis starts with piracy, which has gotten significant play in the courts of appeals’ extraterritoriality cases like Doe v. Exxon and Rio Tinto (as well as in the Kiobel oral arguments on corporate liability). Because Sosa held that piracy would be actionable under the ATS, it is clear that the battle over extraterritoriality in Kiobel will be a naval engagement. It is true that piracy occurs extraterritorially, and under the current piracy statute, can be prosecuted...
27.03.12 | |

07 Nov

Tobias Thienel On the letter of the Convention: the question of whether a state party to the Convention is bound by it in respect of its acts of extraterritorial jurisdiction is surely among the thornier issues, but I will hazard a few observations nonetheless: Under Article 1 of the Convention, its guarantees apply to 'everyone within [the high contracting parties'] jurisdiction'. This means primarily the territory of any state party, but also extraterritorial jurisdiction, where a state party in fact exercises 'effective control' (note: not the Nicaragua test, see Tadic,...
07.11.06 | |

16 Aug

...I must confess that I have written a draft article on the application of municipal criminal law in extraterritorial armed conflict but have been unable to invest the necessary time to refine and format it. Part of the reason for that is that I have also begun a different article that considers evidence and arguments for placing military commissions in a different theoretical perspective. I may try to post a summary of my key points of analysis on the former subject in the not-too-distant future. The latter article may ultimately...
16.08.10 | |

30 Mar

...for Constitutional law. One can also consider an associated dilemma as follows: giving effect to national law may have extraterritorial effects, but failing to give effect to national law may be viewed as giving extraterritorial effect to another law. The list of resolutions approved by the ASIL membership is an example of the complex interplay, and the corresponding tensions created, between national and international law. When is it proper and appropriate to suggest (at least implicitly) that norms of international law can be viewed as a constraining force on national...
30.03.06 | |

23 May

...legal significance of, consuls as opposed to diplomats was much greater in the founding period. The consular role could range from mere ombudsman-like assistance to merchants in foreign ports to full-fledged autonomy over home-country nationals as witness the extraterritorial rights of French consuls under the early 1790s convention. Over time, as Peter indicates, the differences diminished. Recent developments, most notably significant trans-border movements of people and the VCCR cases, may signal the need for a renewed bifurcation, albeit without the rebarbative extraterritorial aspects of consuls in the age of imperialism....
23.05.07 | |