Extraterritoriality

DEVELOPMENTS IN THE LAW EXTRATERRITORIALITY “The district courts shall have original jurisdiction of any civil action by an alien for a tort only, committed in violation of the law of nations or a treaty of the United States.” Alien Tort Statute, 28 U.S.C. § 1350 (2006). “We assume that Congress legislates against the backdrop of the pre- sumption against extraterritoriality.” EEOC v. Arabian Am. Oil Co., 499 U.S. 244, 248 (1991). “[T]he number of U.S. lawsuits where American laws are applied extraterritorially to solve global problems has grown. This trend, how- ever, is not peculiar to the United States. Increasingly other countries are also applying their laws extraterritorially to exert international in- fluence and solve transboundary challenges.” Austen L. Parrish, Reclaiming International Law from Extraterritoriality, 93 MINN. L. REV. 815, 818 (2009) (footnote omitted). “The Organization is based on the principle of the sovereign equality of all its Members. All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner incon- sistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.” U.N. Charter art. 2, paras. 1, 4. 1226 2011] DEVELOPMENTS — EXTRATERRITORIALITY 1227 TABLE OF CONTENTS I. INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................................. 1228 II. IMPLICATIONS OF EXTRATERRITORIALITY IN THE ALIEN TORT STATUTE .... 1233 A. Introduction ..................................................................................................................... 1233 B. Overview of ATS History ............................................................................................... 1235 C. Lower Court Decisions on the ATS’s Extraterritorial Reach .................................... 1237 1. International Law Limits on the ATS .................................................................... 1238 2. U.S. Law Limitations on the ATS ........................................................................... 1242 D. Conclusion ........................................................................................................................ 1245 III. RESPONDING TO EXTRATERRITORIAL LEGISLATION: THE EUROPEAN UNION AND SECONDARY SANCTIONS ......................................................................... 1246 A. The History of EU Opposition to Secondary Sanctions ............................................ 1247 B. Recent EU Support of New Secondary Sanctions Targeting Iran ........................... 1250 C. Understanding the New EU Approach — and Its Implications .............................. 1252 D. Conclusion: Eliminating Future Conflicts over Extraterritoriality ......................... 1257 IV. EXTRATERRITORIALITY AND THE WAR ON TERROR ............................................. 1258 A. The Context of Boumediene .......................................................................................... 1259 B. The Lower Courts’ Approaches ...................................................................................... 1260 1. Boumediene Outside of Guantánamo: Al Maqaleh v. Gates ............................... 1261 2. Boumediene Outside of Habeas: Al-Zahrani v. Rumsfeld ................................... 1264 C. Implications for Future Detainee Cases ...................................................................... 1267 V. C OMITY AND EXTRATERRITORIALITY IN ANTITRUST ENFORCEMENT ........... 1269 A. Expanding Comity to Restrict Private Extraterritorial Enforcement ..................... 1272 B. Increasing Extraterritorial Criminal Prosecutions .................................................... 1274 C. The Coordination and Substitution of Private and Public Extraterritorial Enforcement ..................................................................................................................... 1277 VI. EXTRATERRITORIAL LAW AND INTERNATIONAL NORM INTERNALIZATION ............................................................................................................ 1280 A. Introduction ..................................................................................................................... 1280 B. The Alien Tort Statute .................................................................................................... 1281 C. The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act ............................................................................... 1285 D. The Iran and Libya Sanctions Act ............................................................................... 1289 E. Conclusion ........................................................................................................................ 1291 VII. CHAPTER 15 AND CROSS-BORDER BANKRUPTCY .................................................... 1292 A. Framing the Debate: Universalism Versus Territorialism .......................................... 1294 B. Non-U.S. Extraterritoriality: A Consideration of Chapter 15 .................................. 1295 C. U.S. Extraterritoriality: Beyond Chapter 15 ............................................................... 1300 D. Lehman Brothers and Cross-Border Insolvency Protocols ........................................ 1301 E. Conclusion ........................................................................................................................ 1303 1228 HARVARD LAW REVIEW [Vol. 124:1226 I. INTRODUCTION American courts have long presumed that federal statutes apply only within the territory of the United States.1 International law also recognizes a norm against state exercise of power in other states’ sovereign territory.2 The exceptionalism of extraterritoriality reflects the foundational ideals of the international state system. In the centuries since the Treaty of Westphalia, the tenets of state sovereignty and territorial integrity have largely defined the international legal system3 and provided the backdrop for its diplomatic standoffs, military con- frontations, and legal disputes. Even the most important organ of twentieth-century internationalism — the United Nations — aims to bolster, rather than erode, the order of sovereign states.4 The supremacy of state sovereignty as a framework for international relations suggests that extraterritorial application of a state’s law undermines other states and the international system as a whole. Yet this Development presents a more complex picture. The Parts below show that a state’s extraterritorial application of its law can serve a range of state and non-state interests, and also suggest that extraterritoriality may support the core values of the international order as often as it harms them. To be sure, there are serious legal, diplomatic, and moral tensions inherent in the extraterritorial application of law. But this Development shows that extraterritoriality and the norm against it have no consistent valence, or at least that the valence is not always so clear in an age of terrorism, international business, and globalization. Part II examines the power of U.S. courts to adjudicate aliens’ claims of human rights violations committed abroad through the Alien Tort Statute5 (ATS). The ATS grants federal district courts jurisdiction over “any civil action by an alien for a tort only, committed in violation of the law of nations or a treaty of the United States.”6 Al- ––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– 1 EEOC v. Arabian Am. Oil Co., 499 U.S. 244, 248 (1991) (“It is a longstanding principle of American law ‘that legislation of Congress, unless a contrary intent appears, is meant to apply only within the territorial jurisdiction of the United States.’” (quoting Foley Bros., Inc. v. Filardo, 336 U.S. 281, 285 (1949))). 2 See RESTATEMENT (THIRD) OF THE FOREIGN RELATIONS LAW OF THE UNITED STATES pt. IV, ch. 1, subch. A, intro. note (1987). International law nonetheless recognizes a state’s prescriptive jurisdiction over its own nationals and conduct that threatens its national se- curity or is intended to have an effect within its territory. See id. § 402. 3 See Jeffrey A. Meyer, Dual Illegality and Geoambiguous Law: A New Rule for Extraterri- torial Application of U.S. Law, 95 MINN. L. REV. 110, 121 (2010). 4 Id. at 122; see also U.N. Charter art. 2, para. 1 (“The Organization is based on the principle of the sovereign equality of all its Members.”). 5 28 U.S.C. § 1350 (2006). 6 Id. 2011] DEVELOPMENTS — EXTRATERRITORIALITY 1229 though enacted in 1789, the ATS lay largely dormant until 1980, when the Second Circuit’s decision in Filartiga v. Peña-Irala7 transformed the ATS into a means of domestically remedying human rights violations abroad.8 After almost two decades of progressive international human rights litigation in the United States, the Supreme Court held in its 2004 decision Sosa v. Alvarez-Machain9 that such jurisdiction is limited to causes of action that are specific, obligatory, and universally accepted by international law.10 Recent, post-Sosa cases demonstrate how federal courts have construed both international and U.S. law to narrow the ATS’s scope, thus inherently affecting its potential extraterritorial reach. Courts have imposed limitations like the state action requirement,11 international law restrictions on classes of defendants,12 the act of state doctrine,13 statutory preemption,14 and exhaustion15 to preclude or limit ATS claims. Notably, pre-Sosa debates

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