Search: extraterritorial sanctions

...see an Iraqi prosecution after all since the Blackwater employees’ immunity wasn’t really all that broad. Alternatively, there are U.S. criminal statutes that might reach their activity in Iraq, but the most obvious candidate: the War Crimes Act, doesn’t seem to apply here, since these crimes don’t seem to rise to that level. The Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act may or may not apply, but that also looks murky since these were State Department contractors, not Pentagon ones. So I actually think, offhand, that the Blackwater employees face a greater danger...

...that foreign corporations cannot be sued under the ATS; Nestle USA hoped to extend that bar to domestic corporations as well.   The company presented only two questions for review.  One was whether “general corporate activity” in the U.S. is enough to overcome the presumption against extraterritorial application of the ATS.  The second was “[w]hether the Judiciary has the authority under the Alien Tort Statute to impose liability on domestic corporations.” According to Justice Alito, the second question — whether U.S. corporations can be sued — was “primary.” Not only...

...apply (here, and here). Although causing much controversy in France, double criminality is not practiced by other states actively exercising universal jurisdiction such as Belgium, Germany and Sweden. Whilst the principle is recognized as an essential safeguard to extraterritorial prosecutions before domestic courts, the present post shows that it is fulfilled in the specific context of universal jurisdiction over international crimes. Double criminality as a requirement for universal jurisdiction was first applied by the Court of Cassation in the Chaban case in November 2021. As a former reservist of the...

[Dr. Smadar Ben-Natan is an Israeli and international lawyer, and postdoctoral fellow at the University of Washington, Seattle. She studies the intersection of international law, human rights, and criminal justice in Israel/Palestine, and has published on Israeli military courts, POW status, torture, and extraterritorial human rights.] [A previous version of this commentary was published in Hebrew by the Forum for Regional Thinking, part of the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute. The author is a board member at B’tselem, one of the organizations discussed in this commentary.] Over the last 18 months,...

...Intergovernmental Agreement (ISS-IGA). The moniker comes from NASA’s mission to land “the first woman and the next man” on the Moon by 2024. More recently, NASA has released its constitutive principles (Artemis Principles). The latest move follows President Trump’s Executive Order (EO) promulgated in April 2020 which recapitulates the US policy on commercial recovery and use of space resources. The Order clearly stated that the US does not view outer space as “a global commons”—a term used to signify extraterritorial spaces with common-pool resources. The Accord is consistent with the...

majority’s opinion may have made the ATS more robust by clearing up some issues, she agreed with other commentators that Justice Breyer’s concurrence took the better conceptual approach. Anthony Colangelo criticised the majority opinion for extending the presumption against extraterritoriality to causes of action, which as part of lex fori are by definition not extraterritorial. Also favouring the Breyer concurrence was John Knox, who was happy to see the presumption against extrajurisdictionality resurfacing. Alex Mills pointed out that by applying a presumption against total extraterritoriality, i.e. in foreign cubed cases,...

...here for Spotify) The first three episodes include interviews with Arthur Ripstein (Toronto) on Kant and the laws of war, Lea Raible (Glasgow) on extraterritorial human rights obligations, and Adom Getachew (Chicago) on the efforts by African and Caribbean independence and decolonization movements at regional and international institution-building. Further episodes are planned on a roughly bi-weekly basis. If you would like to post an announcement on Opinio Juris , please contact John Heieck at eventsandannouncements[at]gmail[dot]com with a one-paragraph description of your announcement along with hyperlinks to more information. Thank you!...

I’m looking forward to our joint symposium on Marko’s impressive book on extraterritorial treaty application. But before that begins, I wanted to flag a new opportunity for those looking to get international experience outside the United States. The Fulbright Program is inaugurating a new ‘Public Policy Fellowship’ for academic year 2012-2013. Here’s how they described it to me: The Fulbright Public Policy Fellowship will allow fellows to serve in professional placements in foreign government ministries or institutions and gain hands-on public sector experience in participating foreign countries while simultaneously carrying...

...readable. Nevertheless, because praising a book quickly becomes boring (for everyone other than the author!), I will try to bring out some differences in our assessments of at least part of the historical materials he discusses – in particular, those which concern the question of the extraterritorial application of the Bill of Rights. One of Kal’s core claims is about the fundamentality of territoriality in the development of U.S. law, including with respect to the application of the Bill of Rights to aliens overseas. The importance and topicality of this...

...investigations into international crimes in Ukraine” (p. 10), Trial international notes more generally the “increasing use of the principles of universal and extraterritorial jurisdiction to curb impunity for international crimes” (see here). But, how can a State prosecute efficiently persons accused of war crimes, crimes against humanity or other serious international crimes in cases when the relevant conduct took place in the territory of one State, (some of) the victims and witnesses have found refuge in the territory of another, and the author is present in the territory of yet...

...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...

...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,...