Law Commons^™

Evading Legislative Jurisdiction, Austen L. Parrish

Articles by Maurer Faculty

In the last few years, and mostly unnoticed, courts have adopted a radically different approach to issues of legislative jurisdiction. Instead of grappling with the difficult question of whether Congress intended a law to reach beyond U.S. borders, courts have side-stepped it entirely. Courts have done so by redefining the definition of extraterritoriality. Significant and contentious decisions in the Ninth and D.C. Circuits paved the way by holding that not all regulation of overseas foreign conduct is extraterritorial. And then suddenly, last term, the U.S. Supreme Court breathed life into the practice. In its landmark Morrison v. National Australia Bank …

Duplicative Foreign Litigation, Austen L. Parrish

Articles by Maurer Faculty

What should a court do when a lawsuit involving the same parties and the same issues is already pending in the court of another country? With the growth of transnational litigation, the issue of reactive, duplicative proceedings - and the waste inherent in such duplication - becomes a more common problem. The future does not promise change. In a modern, globalized world, litigants are increasingly tempted to forum shop among countries to find courts and law more favorably inclined to them than their opponents.

The federal courts, however, do not yet have a coherent response to the problem. They apply …

Reclaiming International Law From Extraterritoriality, Austen L. Parrish

Articles by Maurer Faculty

A fierce debate ensues among leading international law theorists that implicates the role of national courts in solving global challenges. On the one side are scholars who are critical of international law and its institutions. These scholars, often referred to as Sovereigntists, see international law as a threat to democratic sovereignty. On the other side are scholars who support international law as a key means of promoting human and environmental rights, as well as global peace and stability. These scholars are the 'new' Internationalists because they see non-traditional, non-state actors as appropriately enforcing international law at the sub-state level. The …

The Effects Test: Extraterritoriality’S Fifth Business, Austen L. Parrish

Articles by Maurer Faculty

American laws increasingly regulate the conduct of foreigners abroad. The growth in extraterritorial laws, in no small part, can be traced to the effects test - a doctrine that instructs courts to presume that Congress intended to regulate extraterritorially when foreign conduct is found to have a substantial effect within the United States. For many scholars and lawyers, the effects test is the doctrinal lynchpin for determining the geographic reach of domestic laws. Territorial limits on legislative jurisdiction, on the other hand, are seen as anachronistic; a remnant of a pre-modern, pre-globalized world.

This article takes a different, more skeptical …