Snyder Lecture 12: 'US Courts and Transnational Justice: Domestic Politics, Extraterritoriality, and International Law' by Professor Austen Parrish

Duration: 37 mins 27 secs

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Description:	The Lauterpacht Centre for International Law (LCIL), University of Cambridge hosts a regular Friday lunchtime lecture series on key areas of International Law. Previous subjects have included UN peacekeeping operations, the advisory jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice, the crime of aggression, whaling, children and military tribunals, and theories and practices for proving individual responsibility criminal responsibility for genocide and crimes against humanity. This lecture, entitled 'US Courts and Transnational Justice: Domestic Politics, Extraterritoriality, and International Law', was delivered at the Lauterpacht Centre on Friday 13th May 2016 by Austen Parrish, Dean and James H. Rudy Professor of Law at Indiana University Bloomington’s Maurer School of Law.

Description:

The Lauterpacht Centre for International Law (LCIL), University of Cambridge hosts a regular Friday lunchtime lecture series on key areas of International Law. Previous subjects have included UN peacekeeping operations, the advisory jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice, the crime of aggression, whaling, children and military tribunals, and theories and practices for proving individual responsibility criminal responsibility for genocide and crimes against humanity.

This lecture, entitled 'US Courts and Transnational Justice: Domestic Politics, Extraterritoriality, and International Law', was delivered at the Lauterpacht Centre on Friday 13th May 2016 by Austen Parrish, Dean and James H. Rudy Professor of Law at Indiana University Bloomington’s Maurer School of Law.


Created:	2016-05-26 14:21
Collection:	LCIL International Law Seminar Series (VIDEO MOVED) LCIL International Law Seminar Series MOVED
Publisher:	University of Cambridge
Copyright:	University of Cambridge
Language:	eng (English)
Keywords:	International Law; Transnational Justice; Supreme Court; Jurisdiction;


Abstract:	In recent years in a series of jurisdictional decisions, the U.S. Supreme Court has scaled back the ability of litigants to use U.S. courts as a forum for resolving foreign disputes. That retreat from court access has commonly be viewed as disengagement from or hostility towards international law and human rights. The recent decisions then have been lamented as a step back not only for transnational public law litigation, but for overall transnational justice. That narrative, however, is at least incomplete if not misleading. Over the past twenty-five years, the waxing and waning of extraterritorial regulation in the U.S. has commonly been in tension with the development of international law and institutions. The recent retreat from embracing a broad role for U.S. courts in transnational justice has been driven not only by those interested in bolstering parochial interests, but also by those worried that this broader role may in the long term undermine meaningful international norm development. This lecture will describe the rise and recent fall of transnational litigation in the U.S. It will begin by tracing the growth of extraterritorial regulation, and will describe how this growth was spurred by domestic political struggles as well as the ideas of particular legal theorists, who attempted to remake international jurisdictional law. More recently, courts and others in the United States have become nervous over the implications of broad, unilateral assertions of extraterritorial power and have sought ways to stall the erosion of law’s territorial limits. Dean Parrish will describe some of the key U.S. Supreme Court decisions that have done so. Finally, he suggests that this current turn away from international litigation in U.S. courts may be understood as much as a reaffirmation of international law and international jurisdictional principles than as an attack on them. The Snyder Lectures are held in memory of Dr. Earl Snyder, a 1947 Indiana University law graduate, and serve as a unique partnership between the University of Cambridge and the IU Maurer School of Law. The annual lectures are held alternately in Cambridge and Bloomington and are subsequently published in the Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies (IJGLS). Past speakers include Sir Elihu Lauterpacht, Professor Alfred Aman, Professor James Crawford, and Professor Jost Delbrück. A related Snyder Scholarship programme also operates.

Abstract:

In recent years in a series of jurisdictional decisions, the U.S. Supreme Court has scaled back the ability of litigants to use U.S. courts as a forum for resolving foreign disputes. That retreat from court access has commonly be viewed as disengagement from or hostility towards international law and human rights. The recent decisions then have been lamented as a step back not only for transnational public law litigation, but for overall transnational justice. That narrative, however, is at least incomplete if not misleading. Over the past twenty-five years, the waxing and waning of extraterritorial regulation in the U.S. has commonly been in tension with the development of international law and institutions. The recent retreat from embracing a broad role for U.S. courts in transnational justice has been driven not only by those interested in bolstering parochial interests, but also by those worried that this broader role may in the long term undermine meaningful international norm development.

This lecture will describe the rise and recent fall of transnational litigation in the U.S. It will begin by tracing the growth of extraterritorial regulation, and will describe how this growth was spurred by domestic political struggles as well as the ideas of particular legal theorists, who attempted to remake international jurisdictional law. More recently, courts and others in the United States have become nervous over the implications of broad, unilateral assertions of extraterritorial power and have sought ways to stall the erosion of law’s territorial limits. Dean Parrish will describe some of the key U.S. Supreme Court decisions that have done so. Finally, he suggests that this current turn away from international litigation in U.S. courts may be understood as much as a reaffirmation of international law and international jurisdictional principles than as an attack on them.

The Snyder Lectures are held in memory of Dr. Earl Snyder, a 1947 Indiana University law graduate, and serve as a unique partnership between the University of Cambridge and the IU Maurer School of Law. The annual lectures are held alternately in Cambridge and Bloomington and are subsequently published in the Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies (IJGLS). Past speakers include Sir Elihu Lauterpacht, Professor Alfred Aman, Professor James Crawford, and Professor Jost Delbrück. A related Snyder Scholarship programme also operates.

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