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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
Out Now: The 50th anniversary of the first Inter-American specialized conference on private international law. The future of private international law in the Americas by Dante Mauricio Negro Alvarado
The Department of International Law (Secretariat for Legal Affairs) of the Organization of American States (OAS) has just published in essay form the lectures delivered during the 49th Course on International Law, which was held on 5 -16 August 2024. For more information, click here.
The book features the following piece: The 50th anniversary of the first Inter-American specialized conference on private international law. The future of private international law in the Americas by Dante Mauricio Negro Alvarado (in English, p. 295-335). This is a must-read for Private International Law academics and lawyers from the region and beyond. Read more
Call for Abstracts – Emerging Voices in Private International Law (Asser Institute)
Post prepared by Eduardo Silva de Freitas, PhD researcher Erasmus University Rotterdam and junior researcher at the Asser Institute
As part of its 60th anniversary celebrations, the T.M.C. Asser Institute invites abstracts for the panel “Emerging Voices in Private International Law”, to be held on 24 October 2025 in The Hague, at the conference Adapting Private International Law in an Era of Uncertainty.
The panel will feature two early-career scholars (PhD candidates or postdoctoral researchers) presenting original work in the field. Selected participants will also contribute to a forthcoming volume in the Short Studies in Private International Law series.
To apply, please submit a 400-word abstract and brief personal details by 15 August 2025 (24:00 CET) to: e.silva.de.freitas@asser.nl
Full call for abstracts: https://www.asser.nl/media/797989/call-for-abstracts_pil_asser.pdf
Revue Critique de droit international privé – issue 2025/1
Written by Hadrien Pauchard (assistant researcher and doctoral student at Sciences Po Law School)
The first issue of the Revue Critique de droit international privé of 2025 has just been released. It gathers six contributions honouring Albert Armin Ehrenzweig and his legacy, as well as seven case notes and numerous book reviews.
The doctrinal part of the volume is devoted to the proceedings of the Albert Armin Ehrenzweig Conference organized in June 2024 at the University of Vienna, fifty years after the passing away of the great author. The contributions commemorate both the man and the scientist, testifying to the relevance of Albert A. Ehrenzweig’s scholarship to contemporary private international law. They are published in French in the printed version of the Revue (also available online here), and will be available shortly in English (here).