Search: extraterritorial sanctions
13 Apr Guest Post: Is the Alien Tort Statute Headed Back to the Supreme Court?
...allow them to provide further guidance in such cases. Kiobel was something of an outlier—a class action against a foreign parent corporation (Royal Dutch Shell) based entirely on its foreign subsidiary’s activities in a foreign country (Nigeria), in which the foreign parent’s home countries (the Netherlands and the United Kingdom) objected that their own courts were more appropriate forums for the plaintiffs’ claims. The Supreme Court held that the principles underlying the presumption against extraterritoriality limit the causes of action that may be brought under the ATS, but it did...27 Jul The Origins of the Non-Extraterritoriality of the Bill of Rights
...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...
21 Jul Universal Jurisdiction: Arguments for a More ‘Universal’ Double Criminality Requirement in France
...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...03 Oct International Law Weekend, October 20-22
...night at the City Bar will address whether international law has seen “The Death of Sovereignty?” in an era of debt downgrades, seccesionist conflicts, and covert military operations — and will be followed by a free wine and cheese reception. Panels starting at 9 a.m. on Friday at Fordham will look at International Law and U.S. Grand Strategy, the Extraterritorial Reach of Anti-Bribery Legislation Libel Tourism, the UN Disabilities Convention, Sharia and U.S. Law, Developments in Commercial Arbitration, Access to Justice in the Middle East North Africa Region, Regulation of...
05 May A Radical Shift in Libyan and International Priorities is Necessary to Protect Health and Save Lives in Libya
...CRC, the authorities must also seek international cooperation and assistance to boost their scarce resources to fulfill the right to health. The Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights has made clear that States must coordinate with each other in the allocation of responsibilities, including by cooperating to provide “humanitarian assistance in times of emergency” and “contribut[ing] … to the maximum of its capacities.” The obligations under the ICESCR and the CRC are set out at greater length in the Maastricht Principles on Extraterritorial State Obligations in the Area of...26 Jul International Law in the U.S. Supreme Court: Professor Alford on Extraterritoriality
The joy of this project was making the kind of discovery Roger Alford recounts in his post. Alford’s chapter on international law as interpretive tool from 1901 to 1945 discusses, among other things, the Supreme Court’s various approaches to the extraterritorial reach of statutes during that period. Among these approaches was the government purpose test of Unites States v. Bowman (1922). It is interesting to compare Bowman to the Supreme Court’s 2010 decision in Morrison v. National Australia Bank. In Morrison, the Court applied the presumption against extraterritoriality to the...20 Apr Weekend Roundup: April 13 – 19, 2013
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,...
22 Jul Space Law at the Crossroads: Contextualizing the Artemis Accords and the Space Resources Executive Order
...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...
12 Apr The Apartheid Reports: A Paradigm Shift on Israel/Palestine (Part I)
[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,...
28 Jun Suing Corporations for Violating International Law: A Step Forward
...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...