Search: extraterritorial sanctions
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...24 Apr Kiobel Insta-Symposium: A More Positive Outlook for International Law
...consensus, rather than unilateral means. Unilateral extraterritorial regulation of the foreign-cubed variety, where one state purports to dictate conduct in another state’s territory, is in tension with international norms and basic principles of democracy. It’s also a perspective that believes human rights become universal not through some sort of predetermined inevitability, but only through careful building of alliances and legitimacy between different groups joined in purpose. The concern therefore should not be that U.S. courts will become the world’s courts. Rather it’s that any court, in any nation, can assert...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...
22 Jul Carrot and Stick: How Western States Lure and Pressure Third States into Cooperating in Migration Control and What This Means for Migrants’ Rights
...Since the 1980s, the southern neighbor has served as a buffer zone to prevent mass movement up north (FitzGerald, David Scott Refuge Beyond Reach (OUP 2019), pp. 123-159). To halt and decrease the rapidly rising numbers of asylums seekers from Central America in the last months, the US government has pushed for the above-described policies. Both policies, the extraterritorial asylum processing (‘Remain in Mexico-policy’) and the safe-third-country concept, were implemented after a combination of immense pressure from the US government and good coaxing. President Trump had used the threat to...24 May The US’s Retreat from IHL (or, the Triumph of Ryan Goodman)
...— it’s unclear from the fact sheet — its new understanding of the use of lethal force applies only to the current conflict. Second, although I don’t imagine that the US much cares, the jus ad bellum-like targeting standards announced in the fact sheet do not necessarily satisfy the limitations on lethal force imposed by international human rights law. As I have pointed out ad nauseum on the blog (see here for an example), whether an extraterritorial use of force is legitimate under the jus ad bellum says nothing about...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,...
14 Oct Book Symposium on ‘Nuremberg’s Citizen Prosecutor’: The Captains of Industry in the Dock – Ferencz’s Forgotten Nuremberg Legacy
...U.S. Supreme Court affirmed the dismissal of claims against the company but on different grounds: because the alleged conduct, which occurred in Nigeria, did not “touch and concern” the United States with sufficient force to displace the presumption against the extraterritorial application of a U.S. statute. The Court did not opine on the justiciability of claims against corporations, leaving the question for another day. This lopsided circuit split on the question of whether foreign corporations are immune from civil suits under the ATS led the Supreme Court to grant certiorari in Jesner,...
25 Sep Symposium on Climate (Im)Mobility and the African Court’s Climate Advisory Opinion: An Opportunity for Leadership on Migrants’ Rights
...and standards, the Commission addresses several other important aspects of the Charter’s application to the rights of Climate Migrants and Climate Refugees. First, the Guiding Principles affirm that, necessarily, migrants have a right to development that must include climate-resilient development ( Principle 32). The Commission thus urges States party to the Charter to take action to address the extraterritorial effects of climate change. And, in the context of the right to climate resilient development, second, the Commission notes that States must adopt mitigation measures in addition to adaptation and resilience...17 Apr Justice Kennedy’s One-Paragraph Concurrence
...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 Apr US Corporations Sued For Acts in Foreign Jurisdictions Are (Probably) Now Free from ATS Liability
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...