Extraterritoriality

Extraterritoriality and Self-Determination

Professor Evan Criddle has written a fascinating article on extraterritoriality, forthcoming in the American Journal of International Law, but available now on SSRN. Evan argues that much extraterritorial application of domestic law violates the right to self-determination under international law by subjecting non-nationals outside the territory of the regulating state to laws that are not…

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Constitutionality of TVPA Challenged in First Circuit

As previously reported at TLB, a Massachusetts jury last year awarded $15.5 million in damages against Jean Morose Viliena for torture and extrajudicial killing under the Torture Victim Protection Act (TVPA). Viliena was mayor of a town in Haiti where the three plaintiffs lived. The jury found him responsible for murdering the brother of one…

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Applying the TVPRA to Foreign Websites

The facts of Doe v. WebGroup Czech Republic are horrific. The complaint alleges that a U.S. citizen, fourteen years old, was filmed being raped, repeatedly, in the United States. Videos of the assaults were uploaded to foreign pornography websites, from which they were then viewed tens of thousands of times in the United States. Are…

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Transnational Litigation at the Supreme Court, October Term 2024

Today is the first day of the Supreme Court’s October Term. This post briefly discusses four transnational litigation cases in which the Court has already granted cert, as well as several others that are in the pipeline and could be decided this Term. Readers can also consult our Supreme Court page. Cases in which the…

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More Thoughts on the Seventh Circuit’s Motorola Decision

Like Tim Holbrook, we found the Seventh Circuit’s decision in Motorola Solutions, Inc. v. Hytera Communications Corp. Ltd. provocative.  Motorola expands the reach of the Defend Trade Secrecy Act (DTSA) in ways that strike us as inconsistent with the Supreme Court’s concerns about extraterritorial application of U.S. law, particularly in the context of intellectual property…

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Seventh Circuit Explores Copyright and Trade Secret Extraterritoriality

In Motorola Solutions, Inc. v. Hytera Communications Corp. Ltd., the Seventh Circuit  recently addressed the extraterritorial reach of two federal intellectual property statutes, the Defend Trade Secrets Act (DTSA) and the Copyright Act.  The court held that the DTSA does apply extraterritorially and allowed recovery on that basis. The court, however, rejected the recovery of…

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What Does Overruling Chevron Mean for Transnational Litigation?

For the past forty years, under Chevron U.S.A. Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council (1984), courts have deferred to an agency’s interpretation of a federal statute when the statute is ambiguous and the agency’s interpretation is reasonable. On June 28, 2024, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Chevron. In Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, the Court…

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Virtual Workshop: Beyond the Presumption Against Extraterritoriality

Next Tuesday (July 2), TLB Editor Maggie Gardner will present at the Hamburg Max Planck Institute’s virtual monthly Current Research in Private International Law workshop. The talk, which is open to the public (register here), will begin at 8:00 am EST and will be followed by an open discussion. Here is a description of Maggie’s…

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Throwback Thursday: Empagran’s Complicated Legacy

Twenty years ago tomorrow, on June 14, 2004, the Supreme Court handed down its decision in F. Hoffman-La Roche Ltd. v. Empagran S.A. The majority opinion, authored by Justice Stephen Breyer, interpreted the Foreign Trade Antitrust Improvements Act of 1982 (FTAIA) to preclude the application of U.S. antitrust law to injuries in other countries. Empagran…

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Fourth Circuit Applies Recent Supreme Court Decision on RICO Injuries

In Percival Partners Ltd. v. Nduom, the Fourth Circuit (Judge Harris, joined by Judge Thacker and Judge Richardson) applied last Term’s decision in Yegiazaryan v. Smagin (2023) to conclude that the plaintiffs’ alleged RICO injury was impermissibly extraterritorial. In an analysis that embraced Yegiazaryan’s contextual approach to siting RICO injuries, the Fourth Circuit held that…

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Ingrid (Wuerth) Brunk

Vanderbilt Law School
ingrid.wuerth@vanderbilt.eduEmail

William Dodge

George Washington University Law School
william.dodge@law.gwu.eduEmail

Maggie Gardner

Cornell Law School
mgardner@cornell.eduEmail

John F. Coyle

University of North Carolina School of Law
jfcoyle@email.unc.eduEmail

Zachary D. Clopton

Northwestern Pritzker School of Law
zclopton@law.northwestern.eduEmail

Pamela K. Bookman

Fordham University School of Law
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Matthew Salavitch

Fordham Law School
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Hannah Buxbaum

Indiana University Maurer School of Law
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Paul B. Stephan

University of Virginia School of Law
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Noah Buyon

Duke University School of Law
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Naman Karl-Thomas Habtom

University of Cambridge
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Ben Köhler

Max Planck Institute for Comparative and International Private Law
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Melissa Stewart

University of Hawai'i, William S. Richardson School of Law.
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Ian M. Kysel

Cornell Law School
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Craig D. Gaver

Bluestone Law
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