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How to Criticize U.S. Extraterritorial Jurisdiction (Part II)
Written by Bill Dodge, the John D. Ayer Chair in Business Law and Martin Luther King Jr. Professor of Law at UC Davis School of Law.
There are better and worse ways to criticize U.S. extraterritorial jurisdiction. In Part I of this post, I discussed some shortcomings of a February 2023 report by China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, “The U.S. Willful Practice of Long-arm Jurisdiction and its Perils.” I pointed out that the report’s use of the phrase “long-arm jurisdiction” confuses extraterritorial jurisdiction with personal jurisdiction. I noted that China applies its own laws extraterritorially on the same bases that it criticizes the United States for using. I argued that the report ignores significant constraints that U.S. courts impose on the extraterritorial application of U.S. laws. And I suggested that China had chosen to emphasize weak examples of U.S. extraterritoriality, such as the bribery prosecution of Frédéric Pierucci, which was not even extraterritorial.
In this post, I suggest some better ways of criticizing U.S. extraterritorial jurisdiction. Specifically, I discuss three cases in which the extraterritorial application of U.S. law appears to violate customary international law rules on jurisdiction to prescribe: (1) the indictment of Huawei executive Wanzhou Meng; (2) the application of U.S. sanctions based solely on clearing dollar transactions through U.S. banks; and (3) the application of U.S. export controls to foreign companies abroad based on “Foreign Direct Product” Rules. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs report complains a lot about U.S. sanctions, but not about the kind of sanctions that most clearly violates international law. The report says much less about export controls and nothing about Meng’s indictment, which is odd given the tensions that both have caused between China and the United States. Read more
How to Criticize U.S. Extraterritorial Jurisdiction (Part I)
Written by Bill Dodge, the John D. Ayer Chair in Business Law and Martin Luther King Jr. Professor of Law at UC Davis School of Law.
China has been critical of U.S. extraterritorial jurisdiction. In February, China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued a report entitled “The U.S. Willful Practice of Long-arm Jurisdiction and its Perils.” In the report, the Ministry complained about U.S. secondary sanctions, the discovery of evidence abroad, the Helms-Burton Act, the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, the Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act, and the use of extraterritorial jurisdiction in criminal cases. The report claimed that U.S. extraterritorial jurisdiction has caused “severe harm … to the international political and economic order and the international rule of law.”
There are better and worse ways to criticize U.S. extraterritorial jurisdiction. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs report pursues some of the worse ways and neglects some better ones. In this post, I discuss a few of the report’s shortcoming. In a second post, I discuss stronger arguments that one could make against U.S. extraterritorial jurisdiction. Read more
International child abduction: navigating between private international law and children’s rights law
In the summer of 2023 Tine Van Hof defended her PhD on this topic at the University of Antwerp. The thesis will be published by Hart Publishing in the Studies in Private International Law series (expected in 2025). She has provided this short summary of her research.
When a child is abducted by one of their parents, the courts dealing with a return application must consider several legal instruments. First, they must take into account private international law instruments, specifically, the Hague Child Abduction Convention (1980) and the Brussels IIb Regulation (2019/1111). Second, they have to take into account children’s rights law instruments, including mainly the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.
News
Report of the Oxford Conference on “Characterisation in the Conflict of Laws”
The author of this report is Meltem Ece Oba (Koç University, Istanbul). The post is being published simultaneously on Conflictoflaws.net and on the EAPIL blog.
On 20-21 March 2025, a conference on “Characterisation in the Conflict of Laws” was convened at St Hilda’s College, Oxford. Under the auspices of the Institute of European and Comparative Law in the Law Faculty of the University of Oxford, the conference was jointly organised by Dr Johannes Ungerer (University of Oxford and Notre Dame University in England), Dr Caterina Benini (Catholic University of Sacred Heart, Milan) and PD Dr Felix Berner (University of Tübingen). The conference brought together scholars and practitioners from several jurisdictions around the world.
Summer School ‘Consumer and Market Law in the European Circular Economy’
Registration is now open for the Summer School ‘Consumer and Market Law in the European Circular Economy’ which will be held from 9 to 18 July 2025: 9-11 July online and 14-18 July in presence at the University of Udine, Italy.
The Summer School is organised by the University of Udine, in cooperation with a consortium of European universities, including University of Essex, De Montfort University of Leicester, University of West Timisoara, East Anglia University, University of Rijeka, University of Belgrade and University of Szeged, within the framework of the Jean Monnet Module CoME CircLE.
The 2025 Summer School will consist of 40 hours of lectures, a workshop and a moot court. Attendees will be offered a comprehensive training on the legal discipline of consumer protection and market regulation in the EU Law, with a particular reference to circular economy, taking into account the following relevant topics: Consumer protection and empowerment issues; Private international law issues; Dispute resolution and redress issues; and Market regulation.
Eligible are undergraduate students, graduatestudents and PhD students, studing Law, Economics, Political Science or International Relations. Application deadline is 31 May 2025, 12.00 pm GMT. Those who are interested in applying, need to fill in the application form and submit it to ip.europeanlaw.uniud@gmail.com.
For details see the programme and the call for application.
HCCH Monthly Update: March 2025
HCCH Monthly Update: March 2025
Membership
On 5 March 2025, Rwanda deposited its instrument of acceptance of the Statute, becoming the 92nd Member of the HCCH. On the same day, Guatemala applied to become a Member of the HCCH. More information is available here.