Questions of legal extraterritoriality figure prominently in scholarship on legal pluralism, transnational legal studies, international investment law, international human rights law, state responsibility under international law, and a large number of other areas. Yet many accounts of extraterritoriality make little effort to grapple with its thorny conceptual history, shifting theoretical valence, and complex political roots and ramifications. This book brings together thirteen scholars of law, history, and politics in order to reconsider the history, theory, and contemporary relevance of legal extraterritoriality. Situating questions of extraterritoriality in a set of broader investigations into state-building, imperialist rivalry, capitalist expansion, and human rights protection, it tracks the multiple meanings and functions of a distinct and far-reaching mode of legal authority. The fundamental aim of the volume is to examine the different geographical contexts in which extraterritorial regimes have developed, the political and economic pressures in response to which such regimes have grown, the highly uneven distributions of extraterritorial privilege that have resulted from these processes, and the complex theoretical quandaries to which this type of privilege has given rise. The book will be of considerable interest to scholars in law, history, political science, socio-legal studies, international relations, and legal geography.

Is Private International Law (PIL) still fit to serve its function in today’s global environment? In light of some calls for radical changes to its very foundations, this timely book investigates the ability of PIL to handle contemporary and international problems, and inspires genuine debate on the future of the field.

"The concept of extraterritoriality designates certain relationships between space, law, and representation. This collection of essays explores contemporary manifestations of extraterritoriality and the diverse ways in which the concept has been put to use in various disciplines. Some of the essays were written especially for this volume; others are brought here together for the first time. The inquiry into extraterritoriality found in these essays is not confined to the established boundaries of political, conceptual, and representational territories or fields of knowledge; rather, it is an invitation to navigate the margins of the legal-juridical and the political, but also the edges of forms of representation and poetics.Within its accepted legal and political contexts, the concept of extraterritoriality has traditionally been applied to people and to spaces. In the first case, extraterritorial arrangements could either exclude or exempt an individual or a group of people from the territorial jurisdiction in which they were physically located; in the second, such arrangements could exempt or exclude a space from the territorial jurisdiction by which it was surrounded. The special status accorded to people and spaces had political, economic, and juridical implications, ranging from immunity and various privileges to extreme disadvantages. In both cases, a person or a space physically included within a certain territory was removed from the usual system of laws and subjected to another. In other words, the extraterritorial person or space was held at what could be described as a legal distance. (In this respect, the concept of extraterritoriality presupposes the existence of several competing or overlapping legal systems.) It is this notion of being held at a legal distance around which the concept of extraterritoriality may be understood as revolving.

This fully updated second edition of Jurisdiction in International Law examines the international law of jurisdiction, focusing on the areas of law where jurisdiction is most contentious: criminal, antitrust, securities, discovery, and international humanitarian and human rights law. Since F.A. Mann's work in the 1980s, no analytical overview has been attempted of this crucial topic in international law: prescribing the admissible geographical reach of a State's laws. This new edition includes new material on personal jurisdiction in the U.S., extraterritorial applications of human rights treaties, discussions on cyberspace, the Morrison case. Jurisdiction in International Law has been updated covering developments in sanction and tax laws, and includes further exploration on transnational tort litigation and universal civil jurisdiction. The need for such an overview has grown more pressing in recent years as the traditional framework of the law of jurisdiction, grounded in the principles of sovereignty and territoriality, has been undermined by piecemeal developments. Antitrust jurisdiction is heading in new directions, influenced by law and economics approaches; new EC rules are reshaping jurisdiction in securities law; the U.S. is arguably overreaching in the field of corporate governance law; and the universality principle has gained ground in European criminal law and U.S. tort law. Such developments have given rise to conflicts over competency that struggle to be resolved within traditional jurisdiction theory. This study proposes an innovative approach that departs from the classical solutions and advocates a general principle of international subsidiary jurisdiction. Under the new proposed rule, States would be entitled, and at times even obliged, to exercise subsidiary jurisdiction over internationally relevant situations in the interest of the international community if the State having primary jurisdiction fails to assume its responsibility.

Nation states are increasingly asserting jurisdiction over criminal offenses that occur extraterritorially. In some instances, this can cause political tension and legal uncertainty, as the principles of jurisdiction under international law do not adequately resolve competing claims. In that context, this book considers principles of jurisdiction and mechanisms by which to achieve jurisdictional restraint under international law, including the possibilities presented by the abuse of rights doctrine.

Expanded version of author's thesis (doctoral)--University of Cambridge, 2010.

Explores whether states possess extraterritorial obligations under international law to respect and ensure economic, social and cultural rights.