Search: extraterritorial sanctions

...to the exigencies of Latin America’s strong commitment to human rights and democratic values. This is why non-intervention now coexists with the Inter-American Democratic Charter, as seen above. The Lima Group’s statement and Mexico’s opposition to it, take place in the context of one such particularly hot-topic discussion: economic sanctions. Every year, the Human Rights Council approves a Resolution on “unilateral coercive measures and human rights”. This resolution calls upon states to stop adopting unilateral measures “of a coercive nature with extraterritorial effects, which create obstacles to trade relations among...

...possible readings of an exchange between Justice Scalia and the US Solicitor General on whether the Court should give deference to the views of the State Department. During our special Kiobel Roundtable, Curtis Bradley argued that the presumption against extraterritorial application is a better fit than the stronger presumption against extraterritoriality to limit the scope of the ATS. In his post, William Dodge also pointed out that suggestions by respondents to apply the presumption against extraterritoriality did not appear to gain traction with the justices. He also touched on the...

...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...

Over at Lawfare, I have posted a brief review of three books on international law, war, and counterterrorism, with a particular focus on the changing shape of counterterrorism through drone warfare and targeted killing. These are all excellent books and I commend them to the scholarly community. Noam Lubell, Extraterritorial Use of Force Against Non-State Actors (Oxford 2010) Kimberley N. Trapp, State Responsibility for International Terrorism (Oxford 2011) Hew Strachan and Sibylle Scheipers, The Changing Character of War (Oxford 2011)...

...since been seized of this conflict, one of a growing number of instances over the past two decades which have given rise to extraterritorial jurisdiction. The Leading Grand Chamber judgments of Chiragov and Others v. Armenia (no. 13216/05) and Sargsyan v. Azerbaijan (no. 40167/06) from 2015 which concern the 1992 Nagorno-Karabakh conflict remain under enhanced supervision by the Committee of Ministers, classified as a “Complex Problem” due to the unresolved political conflict. It was therefore inconceivable that the Interim Measures could have succeeded where the Grand Chamber and the Committee...

...than what is already available from non-US providers, so for years global platforms like Google Earth displayed only low-resolution imagery of the area. This is a remarkable example of the extraterritorial reach of a US legislation that with a domestic statute could effectively project one state’s security interests into the global infrastructure of witness Earth from above. This exceptional censorship regime hid evidence of expanding settlements, leveled villages, and military deployments, hindering both science and human rights monitoring for decades.​ The accountability costs were real. Through the Second Intifada and...

Mitt Romney is holding a fundraiser this evening in London. (Here’s a nice scene-setter.) Almost quaint how he promises not to criticize Obama while abroad, in the tradition of politics stoppping at the water’s edge (as if physical location still mattered in the context of completely transnationalized media). Three quick thoughts: 1. This kind of extraterritorial campaigning is becoming routine. Lots of US citizens live abroad (estimates of as many as seven million), they can vote come November, and (way more importantly) they have a lot of money. For Romney’s...

...of such detentions depends a lot on the particular facts of the case. Category (2), while also leaving some ambiguities, sounds a fair bit like conduct that is now – but was not necessarily in 2001 – covered by the federal criminal laws of the United States. Receiving military training from a terrorist organization is its own independent federal crime and/or is almost certainly prosecutable under the extraterritorial material support offense. Category (4) – “History of associations with extremist activity” – seems to me simply too vague to make heads...

...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...

...proposition that the Rome Statute obligates state parties to enact universal jurisdiction for ICC crimes Step 2: the decision to code a state as having enacted universal jurisdiction if it (a) is a party to the Rome Statute and (b) its domestic law provides for jurisdiction over crimes obligated by international treaty As I explained in my original post, Step 1 is flawed. The Rome Statute does not include universal jurisdiction, and has no obligation whatsoever for state parties to provide (extraterritorial) jurisdiction for ICC crimes. I suspect that the...

...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...