Search: extraterritorial sanctions
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...
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...09 Apr Federal District Court Rules on Torture Allegations
...each make clear that the Constitution’s reach is not so expansive that it encompasses these nonresident aliens who were injured extraterritorially while detained by the military in foreign countries where the United States is engaged in wars.” After reviewing these decisions, the Court concluded that “it is considered settled law that nonresident aliens must be within the sovereign territory of the United States to stake any claim to the rights secured by the Fifth Amendment.” And as for Eighth Amendment claims, the Court ruled that “even assuming the Eighth Amendment...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...27 Jul Does the Constitution Follow the Flag? The Evolution of Territoriality in American Law
...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,...23 Jul Emerging Voices: Responsibility of the Netherlands for the Genocide in Srebrenica–The Nuhanović and Mothers of Srebrenica Cases Compared
...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...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...