/lsEver wonder about the reach of American law outside of the United States? Yishai Schwartz reports on the appeal of the Sokolow v Palestine Liberation Organization on Lawfare, beginning with a recap:
… a case that has its origins in the bloody years of the Palestinian “intifada.” The case centers on seven terror attacks perpetrated between 2001 and 2004. In one attack, a seventeen-year-old blew himself up at a crowded bus stop in the French Hill neighborhood of Jerusalem; in another, Hamas operatives detonated a bomb in a Hebrew University cafe; and in a third, a Palestinian security officer opened fire in a crowded Jaffa mall. Together, these and the other attacks killed dozens of civilians and wounded scores more, including a number of American citizens.
So the families of some of the American victims sued – in the Southern District of New York. The initial trial was a success for the plaintiffs, but then came the appeal:
In the ruling, the panel noted that the vast majority of PA/PLO’s activities take place in the West Bank, where the PA governs. As the court explained:
The overwhelming evidence shows that the defendants are “at home” in Palestine, where they govern. Palestine is the central seat of government for the PA and PLO…. All PA governmental ministries, the Palestinian president, the Parliament, and the Palestinian security services reside in Palestine.
By contrast, these organizations’ lobbying and diplomacy activities in the United States appear relatively insignificant. And the simple fact the territories on which defendants conduct the bulk of their activities “are not within a sovereign nation” does not affect the determination of where it properly understood as “at home.” The West Bank, not the United States, is the place in which the Palestinian Authority and PLO are “amenable to suit.”
Mr. Schwartz goes on to note that, despite recent lawmaking that seems to invite US Courts to apply US Law to foreign incidents, US courts seem shy to do so.
My takeaway is much simpler – leaving the country means changing jurisdictions. Even if the US is the lone remaining superpower, that doesn’t make the rest of the world our little colonial empire. If someone takes a shot at you in a foreign city, the legal remedy lies there, not here in the US.
And that seems intuitively correct, as Mr. Schwartz also concludes.
As a side thought, and with a status vis a vis the legal system that I don’t even qualify as an amateur, I have to wonder how much frustration jurists have with legislators. Given the background in this particular article, it seems that the jurists try very hard to come up with a logically consistent system of arguments and procedures – while the legislature is a sort of stochastic process that sows chaos throughout every time it burps up a new law. I know at least one CPA who shakes his head over current tax law. I wonder if judges shake in their boots every time Congress comes into session.
And then there’s the whole confirming Federal judges debacle…
