Search: extraterritorial sanctions
20 Oct YJIL Symposium: Response to Mark Wu
...Article XIV will prove a major hurdle to liberalization of trade in services conducted electronically. Article XIV allows countries to derogate from their liberalization obligations if necessary to protect public morals or the public order. This escape valve seems a wise measure to prevent the imposition of sanctions in cases where a particular trade liberalization would imperil domestic morals or domestic order. The proponents of GATS recognized, however, that claims of public morals or public order might be used to disguise protectionist regulation, and thus the WTO properly limited the...02 Nov U.S. Court Convicts “Chucky” Taylor of Torture
“Chucky” Taylor, son of former Liberian President (and current war crimes defendant) Charles Taylor, was convicted Friday in Florida federal court of committing torture when he was with his father in Liberia. What makes Taylor’s conviction news (although only news overseas, apparently, since it didn’t make any of the leading U.S. newspapers) is that it is the first conviction under the 1994 Extraterritorial Torture Statute, 18 U.S.C. 234 and 2340A, which was enacted to implement U.S. obligations under the Convention Against Torture (for an interesting profile of Chucky in Rolling...22 Aug Goodbye ATS? U.S. Appeals Court Dismisses South African Apartheid ATS Case and Rejects Narrow Reading of Kiobel
The Second Circuit’s decision in Balintulo v. Daimler* (already discussed at length by John Bellinger at Lawfare) is one of the first major U.S.court opinions to apply the Supreme Court’s decision in Kiobel. It is pretty much a complete smackdown of the ATS plaintiffs, and for any hopes they might have that the Kiobel decision’s bar on extraterritoriality for ATS suits would be read narrowly. While they were at it, the Court pretty much kills every other kind of ATS lawsuit as well. In particular, it rejects the notion that...
23 Jun Revisiting International Cooperation on Illicit Trafficking by Sea: Indonesia and the Final Voyage of the M/V Wise Honest (Part I)
...as M/V Wise Honest’s flag state, would likely never have authorised foreign interdiction and equally, in such cases, never diverted the M/V Wise Honest to an appropriate port for inspection as then required (Res 2375, para. 8). Clearly, designation of the M/V Wise Honest by the UN Sanctions Committee and publication of DPRK’s noncompliance (Res 2375, paras. 8-9) would have been a more palatable result for DPRK than risking the loss of a cargo vessel at a time when all states are to prevent the transfer of new or used...
13 Jul Notice of Retraction
We regret to inform our readers that we have had to remove a post entitled “Legality of Extraterritorial Coercive Economic Measures Taken Against Russia from the Lens of International Trade Law” and published on our site in September 2022. It has recently come to our attention (and has been conceded by the author submitting that piece) that the post was translated and reproduced in substantial part from the piece “Considerazioni Sulle Misure Coercitive Adottate Nei Confronti Della Federazione Russa E Della Bielorussia Alla Luce Del Diritto Del Commercio Internazionale”, authored...22 May A Word on Maqaleh
...brought them there, the court concluded that the “practical obstacles inherent in resolving the prisoner’s entitlement to the writ” while petitioners were detained in an active theater of war weighed against recognizing an extraterritorial constitutional right to habeas. Many things to say on the decision’s import and meaning, but here I’ll just start with two unrelated points. First, on the import. Whatever one thinks of the opinion on the merits, it may be easy to overstate its practical significance. The Obama Administration’s litigation strategy in all of its highest profile...
01 Oct Unlocking the Road to Justice in Syria
...of documentation cannot be overestimated. As part of the efforts to resist denialism, dedicated documentation efforts have foregrounded the experiences of victims/survivors, kept their narratives alive, and provided a wealth of evidence to push back against misinformation and revisionism. Second, and related to this, documentation has also laid the basis of the most remarkable and internationally discussed developments, namely criminal litigation efforts that opened a crack in the wall of impunity. Multiple prosecutorial initiatives under the principle of universal jurisdiction – as well as other forms of extraterritorial jurisdiction –...31 Jul More Detention Cases
A quick note on the two latest case examples on the table in our ongoing detention debate. First, Mr. Al-Marwallah’s case is a prime example of why we shouldn’t make broad new detention policy based on the problems of Gitmo alone. Mr. Al-Marwallah may not be prosecutable for taking terrorist training pre-2001 since the criminal material support statute in effect at that time may not (emphasize may) have had the requisite extraterritorial scope. Any such lacuna in the substantive scope of the criminal law has since been corrected. Mr. Al-Marwallah,...08 Jan You Know the Holidays Are Over When
...Afghanistan? Justice Kennedy’s ruling in Boumediene was nothing if not intensely functional in nature, so the parties’ briefs (and argument) devoted substantial time to discussing how the Kennedy criteria for determining when/whether the U.S. Constitution applies extraterritorially: (1) the citizenship and status of the detainees and the process for determining their status; (2) the nature of the sites of apprehension and detention; and (3) the practical obstacles to extraterritorial application of the constitutional right. As usual, the best account of the hearing can be found at Scotusblog. Yesterday’s upshot: U.S....