Extraterritoriality

D.C. Circuit Holds that Whistleblower Provision Does Not Apply Extraterritorially

In Garvey v. Administrative Review Board, the D.C. Circuit held that a whistleblower provision in the Sarbanes-Oxley Act did not apply to alleged retaliation against an employee in Hong Kong by a subsidiary of a U.S. investment bank. The opinion carefully applies the Supreme Court’s two-step framework for the presumption against extraterritoriality to the whistleblower…

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Supreme Court Grants Cert to Resolve Split Over Extraterritoriality of Civil RICO

Earlier today, the Supreme Court granted cert in Yegiazaryan v. Smagin and CMB Monaco v. Smagin and consolidated the cases for oral argument. The question in both cases is how RICO’s private right of action applies to intangible property, in this case a California judgment confirming a foreign arbitral award. As I previously noted on…

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Stare Decisis and Extraterritoriality

In a recent post, Curt Bradley suggested that the hardest problem the Supreme Court faces as it revisits the geographic scope of the Lanham (Trademark) Act in Abitron Austria GmbH v. Hetronic International, Inc. is what to do about existing precedent. In Steele v. Bulova Watch Co. (1952), the Court held that the Act applies to…

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Supreme Court to Revisit Extraterritorial Scope of Trademark Law

On March 1, the Supreme Court will hear argument in Abitron Austria GmbH v. Hetronic International, Inc., which concerns the extraterritorial scope of the Lanham (Trademark) Act. In resolving this case, the Court will need to decide what to do about an old precedent that appears to be inconsistent with the Court’s modern approach to…

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Oral Argument in Doe v. Apple

Last week, the D.C. Circuit heard oral argument in Doe v. Apple, a case brought by victims of forced labor and human trafficking against five U.S. technology companies. The plaintiffs are children or family members of children who were injured or killed mining cobalt in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The defendants—Apple, Alphabet, Microsoft,…

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A Century of Changes in Extraterritoriality

This post is a lightly edited version of a talk given virtually on November 26, 2022, at the “International Symposium on Accelerating Changes Unseen in a Century and the Development of International Law” organized by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Institute of International Law. I am pleased to be with you today to discuss…

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Throwback Thursday: United States v. Bowman

One hundred years ago, on November 13, 1922, Chief Justice William Howard Taft delivered the Supreme Court’s decision in United States v. Bowman, holding that a federal statute that made it a criminal offense to conspire to defraud a corporation owned by U.S. government applied extraterritorially to conduct on the high seas and in Brazil….

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Cert Petition Raises Personal Jurisdiction Question in Context of the TVPRA

The Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act (TVPRA) explicitly authorizes extraterritorial application to six predicate offenses (18 U.S.C. § 1596) and creates a private right of action (18 U.S.C. § 1595). Assuming without deciding that § 1595’s civil remedy extends extraterritorially to the same extent as those six predicate offenses, the Ninth Circuit in Ratha v….

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Supreme Court to Decide Extraterritorial Reach of Trademark Statute

Today the Supreme Court granted review in Abitron Austria GmbH v. Hetronic International, Inc. to consider when the federal trademark statute, known as the Lanham Act, applies extraterritorially. In Steele v. Bulova Watch (1952), the Court held that the act applied extraterritorially to the infringement of a U.S. trademark in Mexico. But lower courts have developed different tests for implementing Steele, creating a…

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Second Circuit Again Limits Extraterritorial Reach of Commodity Exchange Act

In Laydon v. Coöperatieve Rabobank U.A., the Second Circuit once again held that the Commodity Exchange Act (CEA) does not apply to futures contracts traded on U.S. exchanges that are tied to the values of foreign commodities. Although the transactions in this case undoubtedly occurred in the United States, the court held that the claims…

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Ingrid (Wuerth) Brunk

Vanderbilt Law School
ingrid.wuerth@vanderbilt.eduEmail

William Dodge

UC Davis School of Law
wsdodge@ucdavis.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

Will Moon

University of Maryland
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William K. McGoughran

Vanderbilt Law School
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Chimène Keitner

UC Davis School of Law
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Catherine Amirfar

Debevoise & Plimpton LLP
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Justin R. Rassi

Debevoise & Plimpton LLP
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Isabelle Glimcher

Debevoise & Plimpton LLP
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Ben Köhler

Max Planck Institute for Comparative and International Private Law
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Aaron D. Simowitz

Willamette University College of Law
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Timothy D. Lytton

Georgia State University College of Law
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Chukwuma Okoli

University of Birmingham
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Abubakri Yekini

University of Manchester
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