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...

...federal law may complicate the pleading of such cases under state law. As to choice of law, the conflicts scholars observed that in most cases the law of the state of injury will be applied, which might lead to forum non conveniens dismissals. However, to the extent U.S. domiciliaries are involved, there is some likelihood that U.S. state law might be applicable, which raises issue of due process, extraterritoriality, and preemption. In short, there were lots of new and interesting observations with the conclusion that articles remain to be written...

...highly critical opinion began by observing that the Second Circuit had made a forty-year-long blunder in characterizing Rule 10b-5’s extraterritorial reach as jurisdictional, when in fact it pertained to the merits. (The parties did not dispute the merits characterization, but they had not briefed it.) A remand was nonetheless inappropriate, Justice Scalia explained, because this “threshold error” had not been integral to the reasoning of the courts below. Justice Scalia went on to excoriate the Second Circuit for constructing a jurisprudence that ignored the presumption against extraterritoriality. In addition, he...

...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...

...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...

For the first time, a truth and reconciliation commission has picked up stakes and moved to a foreign country to take public testimony: The Liberian Truth and Reconciliation Commission began its first extraterritorial session in St. Paul Minnesota this week. The Star Tribune has the full story here. One remarkable aspect of the story is the size of the Liberian expat community in the twin cities, and what it says about how the international becomes local — and vice versa: Minnesota is home to about 30,000 Liberians. It is one...

From the Guardian, an account that even an academic would have a hard time making up: Honduras may allow for extraterritorial appeals in some number of jurisdictions, amounting to “semi-independent city-states,” established to improve investment appeal: The complex constitutional agreement under discussion involves Mauritius – an island 10,000 miles away in the Indian Ocean – guaranteeing the legal framework of the courts in the development zones, known locally as La Región Especial de Desarrollo (RED). Mauritius, a member of the Commonwealth, still uses the privy council in Westminster as a...

...part of Volume 35(2), the National Law School of India Review (‘NLSIR’) is releasing a Special Issue focusing on the interactions of TWAIL with ideas of jurisdiction, extraterritoriality, statehood, and sovereignty. The vision behind the Issue owes its origins to Prof. B.S. Chimni’s path-breaking article titled “The International Law of Jurisdiction: A TWAIL Perspective”. In his work, Prof. Chimni highlights the need to critically (re)view the categories of ‘territory’ and ‘extraterritorial. Prof. B.S. Chimni will provide an Afterword, with general reflections and takeaways from the Special Issue. Keeping with our...