Search: extraterritorial sanctions
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...24 Apr Kiobel Insta-Symposium: A More Positive Outlook for International Law
...consensus, rather than unilateral means. Unilateral extraterritorial regulation of the foreign-cubed variety, where one state purports to dictate conduct in another state’s territory, is in tension with international norms and basic principles of democracy. It’s also a perspective that believes human rights become universal not through some sort of predetermined inevitability, but only through careful building of alliances and legitimacy between different groups joined in purpose. The concern therefore should not be that U.S. courts will become the world’s courts. Rather it’s that any court, in any nation, can assert...
27 Oct International Law and Popular Culture Symposium: International Law and the Theatre – An Interview with Playwright Anchuli Felicia King
...that statute, and why the Supreme Court keeps trying to limit its extraterritorial reach. But human rights lawyers and NGOs only resort to what are essentially legal loopholes like the ATS, because it’s so extraordinarily difficult to litigate cases about human rights abuses across different countries. I think it speaks to a broader structural imbalance enmeshed in our international legal institutions: that it’s far easier for powerful state actors and wealthy corporations to access (or evade) justice than poorer nations or oppressed individuals. Another thing that I discovered is...
22 Jul Carrot and Stick: How Western States Lure and Pressure Third States into Cooperating in Migration Control and What This Means for Migrants’ Rights
...Since the 1980s, the southern neighbor has served as a buffer zone to prevent mass movement up north (FitzGerald, David Scott Refuge Beyond Reach (OUP 2019), pp. 123-159). To halt and decrease the rapidly rising numbers of asylums seekers from Central America in the last months, the US government has pushed for the above-described policies. Both policies, the extraterritorial asylum processing (‘Remain in Mexico-policy’) and the safe-third-country concept, were implemented after a combination of immense pressure from the US government and good coaxing. President Trump had used the threat to...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...28 Feb Parsing the Oral Arguments in Kiobel and Mohamad
...tradition, I will hazard a guess that there will be at least one opinion supporting corporate liability (on the principle that corporations are routinely held liable for the torts of their agents), one opinion opposing corporate liability and also challenging the ATS’s grant of jurisdiction over extraterritorial conduct and over suits between aliens, and one opinion (perhaps a concurrence) opining on how ATS suits fit (or not) into the evolving global landscape of domestic adjudication of international law violations (whether these are denominated violations of international law, common law, or...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...