Extraterritoriality
76 Articles

Will Filartiga Survive?
On September 16, the Fourth Circuit will hear oral argument in Warfaa v. Ali, a case brought by the Center for Justice and Accountability under the Alien Tort Statute (ATS) and…

Polish Outrage to Paying Victims of CIA Black Sites—and What the Eur Court Said
Poland will be paying a quarter of a million dollars to two Guantánamo detainees, Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri. The payment arises in the context of the torture of…

Microsoft Case: The Government Responds, But Fails to Convince
The government has now filed its Second Circuit brief in the dispute with Microsoft (discussed here, here, and here), challenging key assertions by Microsoft and its many amici,…

Jaloud v. Netherlands: European Court of Human Rights addresses extra-territorial jurisdiction in Iraq
Last month, the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights handed down its judgment in Jaloud v. the Netherlands (full text). The case arose out of the death of Azhar…

U.N. Committee Criticizes U.S. Record on Torture, Praises U.S. on Extraterritorial Reach of Treaty
On Friday, the United Nations Committee against Torture released its report (full text) on U.S. compliance with the Convention Against Torture. The Committee’s review included…

The Global Reach of the U.S. Position on Torture
The U.S. government’s public pronouncement that the Convention Against Torture (CAT) applies beyond U.S. borders and in situations of armed conflict—its unequivocal “yes”…

The United States and the Torture Convention, Part I: Extraterritoriality
[Editor’s Note: Just Security is holding a “mini forum” on the change in the U.S. government’s position on the application of the Convention Against Torture beyond U.S.…

Harold Koh’s New “Memo to the President” on the Torture Convention
President Obama must soon decide whether to instruct a US delegation, which will appear before a UN body in Geneva next week, whether to equivocate, reject, or accept that the…

Does International Law Matter?
Editors’ Note: The following post is the ninth installment of a new feature, “Monday Reflections,” in which a different Just Security editor will take an in-depth look…

Should Foreign Nationals Get the Same Privacy Protections under NSA Surveillance–or Less (or More)?
When it comes to mass surveillance, should foreign nationals in foreign territory be afforded the same privacy protections as one’s own nationals? According to a recent report…

Time to Give the Sleeves From Our Vest and Acknowledge the Extraterritoriality of the Convention Against Torture
As David Luban noted yesterday evening, Charlie Savage of The New York Times reported that the Obama Administration likely plans to continue to espouse Bush-era positions on the…

“Just looking for loopholes…”
…is what W. C. Fields supposedly said when someone found him leafing through the Bible. Apparently some lawyers in the Obama administration are following Fields’s lead,…