Georgia State University ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University Political Science Dissertations Department of Political Science 5-9-2016 Extraterritorial Courts and States: Learning from the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council Harold Young Georgia State University Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.gsu.edu/political_science_diss Recommended Citation Young, Harold, "Extraterritorial Courts and States: Learning from the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council." Dissertation, Georgia State University, 2016. https://scholarworks.gsu.edu/political_science_diss/40 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Department of Political Science at ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University. It has been accepted for inclusion in Political Science Dissertations by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. EXTRATERRITORIAL COURTS AND STATES: LEARNING FROM THE JUDICIAL COMMITTEE OF THE PRIVY COUNCIL by HAROLD AVNON YOUNG Under the Direction of Amy Steigerwalt, PhD ABSTRACT In 2015, South Africa withdrew from the International Criminal Court asserting United Nation’s Security Council bias in referring only African cases (Strydom October 15, 2015; Duggard 2013) and the United Kingdom reiterated a pledge to withdraw from the European Court of Human Rights, asserting that the court impinges on British sovereignty (Watt 2015). Both are examples of extraterritorial courts which are an important part of regional and global jurisprudence. To contribute to our understanding of the relationship between states and extraterritorial courts, I examine arguably the first and best example of an extraterritorial court, namely the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council (JCPC). Drawing on 50 British Commonwealth states, this dissertation explores the factors influencing the decision to accede to an extraterritorial court and why some states subsequently opt to sever ties.