Search: extraterritorial sanctions

...for Extraterritorial Self-Defense,” Ashley Deeks (Columbia Law School, incoming Associate Professor of Law, University of Virginia School of Law) offers the first sustained descriptive and normative analysis of the “unwilling or unable” test in international law. Descriptively, it explains how the “unwilling or unable” test arises in international law as part of a state’s inquiry into whether it is necessary to use force in response to an armed attack. It identifies the test’s deep roots in neutrality law while simultaneously illustrating the lack of guidance about what inquiries a victim...

...important, the case offers a primer on many, if not most, of the issues typically addressed in an international litigation class: ATS, TVPA, RICO, jus cogens, the political question doctrine, the act of state doctrine, head of state immunity, sovereign immunity, FSIA exceptions, the Hague Service Convention, jurisdictional discovery, personal jurisdiction over private defendants, and the extraterritorial application of substantive laws. If you wanted a good introduction to the salient issues in human rights litigation, Doe v. Israel is not a bad place to start. What is most interesting about...

...Kandahar Airfield in Afghanistan (a NATO-run installation), assaulted a British national with a knife. Other than his employment contract with DynCorp, Brehm has absolutely zero contacts with the United States. Nevertheless, the government prosecuted Brehm under the Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act (MEJA), which, as Brehm conceded (and as the district court held), clearly encompasses Brehm’s offense. The issue before the Fourth Circuit is whether MEJA might be unconstitutional as applied to Brehm’s offense, since (1) the defendant is a non-citizen; (2) the victim is a non-citizen; (3) neither the defendant...

...is proper for a US court to find jurisdiction over a foreign corporate entity on the basis of of a US corporate subsidiary. Chief Justice Roberts flagged the importance of this further question at the very end of his Kiobel opinion, which relied upon the presumption against extraterritoriality; for something to “touch and concern” the United States, he said, sufficient to satisfy jurisdictional requirements under the ATS, contacts would have to be more than mere corporate presence. Corporations are often present in many countries, and it would reach too far...

...application of IHL, the international community should not lose sight of the fact that international human rights law remains applicable to the collective international response to acts of piracy. In a companion piece, Professor Guilfoyle focuses on the law governing the extraterritorial application of human rights law, the principle of non-refoulement, the prohibition of arbitrary detention, and due process protections (see Douglas Guilfoyle, Counter-Piracy Law Enforcement and Human Rights, 59 Int’l & Comp L Q 141 (2010)). In addition, the prohibitions of summary execution and other arbitrary deprivations of the...

...have  often arranged their own affairs in a way that is detrimental to access to vaccines in other countries in spite of their extraterritorial legal obligations to, at very least, avoid their actions that would foreseeably result in the impairment of the human rights of people outside their own territories. It is worth emphasizing that it has still been only some four months since the first mass vaccination campaigns began in December 2020. At the time of writing, approximately 450 million people had been vaccinated worldwide, while many African nations,...

...authoritative legal treatises and over 115 law review articles and argued before the United States Supreme Court, the Iran-U.S. Claims Tribunal, and the International Court of Justice in the Hague. He made landmark contributions to legal scholarship and practice on issues as varied as extraterritorial jurisdiction, international arbitration, international monetary transactions, trans-border child abduction, international monetary law, investor-state dispute settlement, economic sanctions, enforcement of foreign judgments, aviation law, sovereign immunity, international trade, and civil procedure. His most recent work was a comprehensive treatise on International Economic Law. An avid supporter...

...of State is taking place this Thursday, February 12th, 2015 12:00 PM – 1:30 PM US Eastern Standard Time. This year’s theme is: “The Role of the Law in the Fight Against ISIL: Use of Force, Sanctions, and Foreign Terrorist Fighters.” The Section of International Law is pleased to announce the fifth annual non-CLE webcast with the Office of the Legal Adviser from the Jacob Burns Moot Courtroom of the George Washington University Law School in Washington, D.C. Cosponsored by the American Society of International Law, the George Washington University...

...The question thus is whether the Supreme Court’s affirmance constituted a dismissal for lack of SMJ, or instead was a dismissal on the merits. Contextual clues in the Chief Justice’s opinion—in particular, the application of the presumption against extraterritoriality (PAE)—indicate that the Court went beyond the issue of SMJ and reached aspects of the merits. The Court concluded that “[o]n these facts,” the PAE barred relief in this case. There are certain limited circumstances in which a federal court may dismiss on the basis of threshold issues before ascertaining its...

...indicated, the same Ninth Circuit majority also held in Sarei that the adjudication of transitory torts under the Alien Tort Statute does not violate a statutory presumption against extraterritoriality (slip op. at 19334-39) (or, I might add, international law constraints on the extraterritorial application of U.S. law, since the conduct-regulating norms being applied under the ATS come from international law). In addition, in response to an argument raised by the dissent, the majority found that claims relating to violations of international norms that meet the test of universal acceptance set...

...the context of NIAC, Article 42 detention authority even in the more constrained context of IAC is dramatically limited, permitting only that detention as is “absolutely necessary” for the security of the detaining power. Is it “absolutely necessary” for the security of the United States that it be able to detain terrorist suspects picked up anywhere in the world under a legal authority that goes beyond its own sweepingly extraterritorial and often preventively focused criminal law? Guess we’ll find out if the administration advances the Art. 42 theory in court....

...the exercise of well recognized forms of extraterritorial jurisdiction, sometimes notwithstanding treaty obligations to enable themselves so to act. National legislation may be illuminating as to the issue of universal jurisdiction, but not conclusive as to its legality. Moreover, while none of the national case law to which we have referred happens to be based on the exercise of a universal jurisdiction properly so called, there is equally nothing in this case law which evidences an opinio juris on the illegality of such a jurisdiction. In short, national legislation and...