Search: extraterritorial sanctions
26 Feb The Perils of Reducing International Lawyers to Their Nationality: A Response to Vamos-Goldman
Andras Vamos-Goldman has a long post today at Just Security criticising the UK’s recent adoption of the Overseas Operations (Service Personnel and Veterans) Bill, which will make it considerably more difficult for British courts to prosecute soldiers who commit international crimes overseas or to hear civil actions brought by the victims of such crimes. He also decries in general the lack of commitment a number of powerful democracies have shown to international criminal justice, singling out for special opprobrium — not surprisingly — the Trump administration’s sanctions against ICC officials...17 Apr The Death of Universal Civil Jurisdiction Under the ATS
...as a universal civil jurisdiction decision, although it was grounded in U.S. historical analysis that seemed to coincide with universal civil jurisdiction. Still, as I noted before, Justice Breyer did not build on the Sosa concurrence in today’s Kiobel opinion. Instead, he revived the quite rarely invoked “protective” principle to justify the ATS’ extraterritorial reach. He then added that preventing war criminals from winning a “safe harbor” in the U.S. was within the protective principle (that’s a somewhat dubious interpretation to me). This is a much narrower approach than I...
26 Apr The ICJ and the ECtHR’s Provisional Measures in the “Lachin Corridor” in Azerbaijan: Can Armenia Use the Civilian Passage for Military Purposes?
...cargo entry to Azerbaijan’s Karabakh region. It is not an extraterritorial corridor as Armenia and Russia do not have any sovereign rights (e.g., transit rights) over the road. Azerbaijan’s laws apply to the passage. Azerbaijan’s army, police, customs, and other agencies do not check the persons and cargo yet. The Russian peacekeeping force supposedly exercises this function on behalf of Azerbaijan in the passage and also in Karabakh as well. However, unclear passage rules in the Lachin corridor are the main cause of this international legal dispute. To prevent...08 Dec A Response to Justine Nolan by Odette Murray, David Kinley and Chip Pitts
...sought to “underscore the distinction between a principle of law, which is a matter of substance, and the means of enforcing it, which is a matter of procedure or remedy.”[7] The Court holds that the issue of corporate liability under the ATS is one of remedy, to be determined by domestic law. The Exxon and Flomo judgments also consider a number of other important issues in ATS jurisprudence, including the dismissal of the defendants’ arguments against the extraterritorial application of the ATS, and, in Exxon, the identification of the correct...
07 Aug Fifteen Years After Sri Lanka’s Civil War Ended, a Different Approach to Transitional Justice is Needed
...especially at the U.N. Human Rights Council. The international community has minimally stepped in to fill the accountability vacuum, for example through attempts at bringing universal and extraterritorial jurisdiction cases; the establishment of the U.N.’s Sri Lanka Accountability Project; and the sanctioning of alleged perpetrators. Accountability measures at the international level should be amplified, particularly because many victims justifiably do not trust the Sri Lankan government to address rights violations. However, for long-term change in Sri Lanka, genuine, victim and people-centered TJ processes are needed in-country. For this to occur,...
24 Jan Taking Territory of a Third State Seriously: Beginning of IAC and the Strike Against Major General Soleimani (Part I)
[ Pouria Askary is an assistant professor of international law at Allameh Tabataba’i University, and Katayoun Hosseinnejad is a university lecturer of international law in Iran.] As discussed by many scholars and commentators (see e.g. here, here and here) the extraterritorial operation by the US armed forces on 3 January 2020 at Baghdad international airport which led to the assassination of Major General Soleimani, the commander of the Quds Force of Iran, was a flagrant violation of the peremptory norm on prohibition of the use of force enshrined in Article...24 May The US’s Retreat from IHL (or, the Triumph of Ryan Goodman)
...— it’s unclear from the fact sheet — its new understanding of the use of lethal force applies only to the current conflict. Second, although I don’t imagine that the US much cares, the jus ad bellum-like targeting standards announced in the fact sheet do not necessarily satisfy the limitations on lethal force imposed by international human rights law. As I have pointed out ad nauseum on the blog (see here for an example), whether an extraterritorial use of force is legitimate under the jus ad bellum says nothing about...
30 Oct Fourth Annual Symposium on Pop Culture and International Law: The “Panem Statute” – the Reconfiguration of the State of Panem and the Trial of Coriolanus Snow for War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity
...criteria for statehood (Montevideo Convention, 1933), which requires (a) permanent population; (b) a defined territory; (c) government; and (d) the capacity to enter into relations with other states. Yet, it has been recognized (ICRC Commentary of 2016) that NIACs can involve extraterritorial aspects, when a foreign State – District 13 – joins one party to the conflict – the rebel groups from the other Districts, rendering the conflict non-international in nature, as long as the State does not exercise effective control of the groups, which is not the case. Having...26 Mar Kiobel (I): ATS Arguments Make for Strange Bedfellows
...on extraterritoriality. Now the conservatives point to U.S. law – the judge-made presumption against extraterritoriality – and liberals point to the international status of the offenses. It is like a game of Twister. Neither position is fully correct. There may be a place for extraterritoriality in ATS cases, but in a much narrower class of cases then where it is currently applied. The following two posts will draw on much of my prior work, and I hope the reader forgives me not recapitulating the entire argument of those articles here....28 Jul Constitutional Domain and the Court
In reading Kal’s description of territoriality’s ebb and flow, I was particularly interested in the evolution in judicial thinking with regard to constitutional scope or domain. His description of the path from In re Ross, which stated emphatically that the Constitution does not follow the flag, to Reid and Boumediene, which give some extra-territorial force to the Bill of Rights and other constitutional guarantees, is excellent. The evolution has obviously been gradual, even glacial. Within this narrative, there are some fascinating examples of courts dramatically pushing constitutional boundaries outward, including...