Search: extraterritorial sanctions
03 Oct Kiobel Roundtable: The Devil in the Details
...ATS claims arising in the territory of foreign states would require rejecting thirty years of ATS litigation, including the holding of Filártiga v. Peña-Irala. As Justice Kagan explained, it would also require abandoning the reasoning of the Court’s 2004 decision in Sosa v. Alvarez-Machain. Justice Scalia pointed out that applying the presumption against extraterritoriality would bar claims arising on the high seas as well as those arising in the territory of a foreign state, despite Sosa’s indication that the ATS was intended to apply to piracy, an international crime that...
23 Jun Fantastical Opinio Juris and How to Find It
...statements therein made) to opine on whether the practice of extraterritorial self-defense against non-State actors absent consent of the territorial State was permitted or not by article 51 of the UNC. In prospecting for opinio juris a richer vein could not be found: States used legal justificatory discourse, expressed their own legal views, and weren’t coy on articulating what they thought was the definitive meaning, extent, and significance on the customary rules purportedly expanding (or not) self-defense. This seems to be the indicative of certainty about the articulation of legality...25 Nov International Law Does Not Prohibit Commercial Asteroid Mining. Nor Should It.
...limiting itself to authorizing private citizen (as opposed to “national”) exploitation, and subjecting that exploitation to “international obligations of the United States.” The Act also goes on to “disclaim” extraterritorial sovereignty (shouldn’t that be “extraterrestrial” by the way?) It is the sense of Congress that by the enactment of this Act, the United States does not thereby assert sovereignty or sovereign or exclusive rights or jurisdiction over, or the ownership of, any celestial body. I think the law’s backers are correct that it does not violate US treaty obligations. All...29 Jul Cyber-Territoriality
...the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is quoted as saying: “How do you understand sovereignty in the cyberdomain? It doesn’t tend to pay a lot of attention to geographic boundaries.” Putting aside what may be the fundamental territorial misunderstanding in the quote, I wonder what the evolution of territoriality suggests with regard to this national security initiative. Kal’s book details the various extraterritorial options. Conquering and controlling “cyberterritories” is obviously out of the question. But assuming soverign borders are still operative in this context, Kal’s book suggests several other options. Will...03 Oct Into the Deference Weeds in Kiobel
Rather than dwelling further on any prediction of what kind of opinion the Court is likely to produce following oral arguments in Kiobel (FWIW, I thought arguments went better for plaintiffs than I’d anticipated), I wanted to highlight what I thought was a particularly interesting exchange on whether the State Department’s views on the ATS were entitled to some deference by the Court. Background first. I’d read the U.S. Government’s latest brief as arguing for something like a case-by-case approach on the question of which extraterritorial ATS cases might be...