In association with the International Commission of Jurists

Search: extraterritorial sanctions

18 Apr

...fundamental problems with how lower courts have approached these suits. These problems center on five key issues: First, whether the ATS applies extraterritorially – that is, whether a U.S. court can properly apply U.S. federal common law under the ATS to conduct that occurred entirely in the territory of a foreign State. Second, even if such a cause of action could properly be recognized, whether exhaustion of adequate and available local remedies in that foreign country should be a prerequisite to bringing an ATS suit. Third, whether corporations or other...
18.04.08 | |

23 Jun

...statements therein made) to opine on whether the practice of extraterritorial self-defense against non-State actors absent consent of the territorial State was permitted or not by article 51 of the UNC. In prospecting for opinio juris a richer vein could not be found: States used legal justificatory discourse, expressed their own legal views, and weren’t coy on articulating what they thought was the definitive meaning, extent, and significance on the customary rules purportedly expanding (or not) self-defense. This seems to be the indicative of certainty about the articulation of legality...
23.06.21 | |

04 Apr

...prompted to respond to a legal finding of genocide through sanctions, boycotts, or the pursuit of universal jurisdiction cases, especially in light of Article I’s obligations “to prevent and to punish,” which the Court has long held are “not territorially limited by the Convention.” This extraterritorial duty will, as mentioned previously, be relevant to the Ukraine case, in which the Court will determine whether Russia’s use of military force to prevent and punish “genocide” in Ukraine is legal. This inquiry could, in tandem with an advisory opinion on whether China...
04.04.22 | |

12 Sep

...resolved under the customary international law of jurisdiction. The Lotus and the distinction between prescriptive and enforcement jurisdiction The starting point when considering whether territorial states may or may not delegate their prescriptive and enforcement jurisdiction by treaty to an international court over nationals of non-consenting states is of course The Lotus. With respect to the exercise of prescriptive jurisdiction, Lotus stands for the principle that ‘what is not prohibited is permitted’ (a prohibitive rule). This rule does not apply to the extraterritorial exercise of enforcement jurisdiction as Lotus holds...
12.09.18 | |

15 Jul

...how India, Honduras, and Switzerland have introduced laws with an extraterritorial reach that clarify these states’ responsibilities for overseeing private security operations abroad. Finally, data protection principles and legislation are particularly relevant in controlling the data processing activities of PMSCs. Over 130 countries around the world have introduced data protection and privacy legislation that would be directly applicable to the companies operating in their jurisdiction. Also, the Council of Europe Convention 108  – officially titled ‘Convention for the Protection of Individuals with regard to Automatic Processing of Personal Data’ –...
15.07.25 | and |

05 Jun

...fear for their life. These evolving extraterritorial control mechanisms raise profound questions about the circumvention of established protection frameworks that have traditionally governed asylum policy. A Continuum of Externalization To understand the significance of this new “staging expulsion” model in the U.S., we must place it within a broader trend in migration governance: the externalization of migration control. Externalization refers to policies by which countries like the U.S., Australia or EU countries shift their migration enforcement responsibilities onto third countries – often in exchange for financial support, visa waivers or...
05.06.25 | |

16 Oct

...from the inside I “actually advised the Obama administration to change its interpretation and to recognize the extraterritorial application of the ICCPR;” I then argued with greater success both internally and externally for the view that the Convention Against Torture applies extraterritorially, a view that the Obama administration eventually adopted after I left. Given Eviatar’s recognition that I fought internally—with admittedly mixed success—for the United States to actually comply with international human rights law, I am bit puzzled by her suggestion that “prominent lawyers and legal scholars like [my]self could...
16.10.18 | |

01 May

...NGO activities in Egypt before being allowed to leave the country. I had always thought “diplomatic asylum” something of a misnomer, as often paired with the common misunderstanding that embassy premises are extraterritorial (as in, that the US embassy in Beijing counts as US territory, which in fact it doesn’t). Turns out that the term has some historical traction, even though the its operation now appears to turn on the inviolability of diplomatic premises under the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations and not any distinctive legal doctrine. Much of that...
01.05.12 | |

21 Nov

Last week the Ninth Circuit issued a controversial opinion in Mujica v. Airscan, Inc., that sharply limits the scope of human rights litigation. The claims in Mujica arose in Colombia and allegedly implicate corporate collusion with the Colombian military. Following Kiobel the common consensus was that Alien Tort Statute litigation would be severely curtailed based on the presumption against extraterritoriality. Not surprisingly, the Ninth Circuit rejected the Plaintiffs’ claims, finding that where the only connection to the United States was the Defendants’ nationality, the claims do not “touch and concern”...
21.11.14 | |

31 Oct

...Juris, David Glazier (Loyola, LA), Detlev Vagts (Harvard), Roger Clark (Rutgers-Camden), Devin Pendas (Boston College) and Lawrence Douglas (Amherst). The discussion will start with a cross-posted introduction by Kevin today, and end with his reply to the discussants on Friday. Both the discussants and our readers are of course welcome to join in in the comments. Following discussion of Kevin’s book, Opinio Juris and EJIL:Talk! will host a joint discussion of Marko Milanovic’s book, Extraterritorial Application of Human Rights Treaties: Law, Principles and Policy (Oxford UP). Cross-posted at EJIL: Talk!...
31.10.11 | |

18 Feb

...over who crosses U.S. borders, it’s not for the courts to decide otherwise absent some very clear authorization. So “what law authorized the district court to order the government to bring petitioners to the United States and release them here?” Not the Due Process Clause, says the D.C. Circuit. Immigration cases have always held that the Constitution doesn’t extend to non-citizens held beyond the “sovereign territory” of the United States. (Never mind, I suppose, that Justice Kennedy’s Boumediene majority no longer thinks sovereignty is the touchstone for the extraterritorial extension...
18.02.09 | |

11 Apr

...of the key features of my forthcoming book — The Oxford Guide to Treaties is a new set of treaty clauses. The volume includes 350 clauses taken from an array of existing treaties on 23 different treaty issues, such as the various ways treaty clauses may define a treaty’s object and purpose, delineate territorial and extraterritorial application, identify a treaty’s relationship to other treaties, or authorize simplified amendment procedures. I found some of these clauses the old fashioned way, using multi-volume hard-bound sets of books like those edited by Bevans...
11.04.12 | |