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Search: extraterritorial sanctions

27 Oct

...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...
27.10.21 | |

17 Apr

...cases will be determined in the future according to the detailed statutory scheme Congress has enacted. Other cases may arise with allegations of serious violations of international law principles protecting persons, cases covered neither by the TVPA nor by the reasoning and holding of today’s case; and in those disputes the proper implementation of the presumption against extraterritorial application may require some further elaboration and explanation. UPDATE: In the annals of amusing moments in OJ history, looks like Julian and I had much the same thought at the same moment....
17.04.13 | |

20 Oct

...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...
20.10.09 | |

23 Jul

...ground. It implicitly distinguished a de jure and de facto basis of extraterritorial jurisdiction. The Netherlands formally (de jure) had jurisdiction because the territorial entity, the State of Bosnia-Herzegovina, had basically surrendered its competence to govern in the area to the United Nations Protection Force (UNPROFOR). Clearly, UNPROFOR cannot be equated with the State of the Netherlands, but considering the Supreme Court’s answer to the attribution question (see above), this was nonetheless relevant. The Netherlands also had de facto jurisdiction, because an examination of the facts had shown that it...
23.07.14 | |

02 Nov

“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...
02.11.08 | |

23 Jun

...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...
23.06.20 | |

13 Jul

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...
13.07.23 | |

22 May

...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...
22.05.10 | |

09 May

...President of the United States had made it clear that torture anywhere was an affront to human dignity everywhere and that freedom from torture was an inalienable right. Beyond the protections in the Constitution, United States criminal law prohibited torture. There were no exceptions to that prohibition. The Congress had also passed laws that provided for severe federal sanctions, both civil and criminal, against those who engaged in torture outside the territory of the United States…. In respect of Committee questions concerning United States actions taken in response to the...
09.05.06 | |

18 Apr

[Christopher A. Whytock is a Professor of Law and Political Science at UC Irvine School of Law] I do not think the Court’s opinion in Kiobel means that ATS litigation in federal courts is going away any time soon. First, make no mistake, the “presumption against extraterritoriality” applied by the Court in Kiobel is a new creation that is likely to give rise to further litigation. In at least three ways, the new presumption is different from the Morrison-style presumption used by the Court to determine whether a federal statute...
18.04.13 | |

27 Jul

...are much less well known. Regardless, until now these parts have not been put together and treated as an interconnected, if occasionally wide-ranging, narrative. My third aim is to advance several more specific claims about this legal evolution. First, the central concept of extraterritoriality has shown surprising continuity in its purpose even as its form has changed dramatically. Extraterritoriality meant very different things to nineteenth-century lawyers than it does to contemporary lawyers. But the primary function of extraterritoriality has remained, at a fundamental level, the same. That function, I argue,...
27.07.09 | |

17 Apr

Here is the bottom line of the Roberts’ opinion, which makes it sound like this whole ATS thing is really a simple application of Morrison v. National Australia Bank. On these facts, all the relevant conduct took place outside the United States. And even where the claims touch and concern the territory of the United States, they must do so with sufficient force to displace the presumption against extraterritorial application. See Morrison, 561 U. S. ___ (slip op. at 17–24). Corporations are often present in many countries, and it would...
17.04.13 | |