Abstract
In recent years, a growing number of countries have courted controversy by regulating activities outside their borders. They have used extraterritorial lawmaking to cultivate competitive global markets, strengthen or weaken data privacy, combat foreign terrorism and military aggression, promote human rights abroad, and suppress political dissent at home. This Article explores whether extraterritorial lawmaking can be reconciled with the right to self-determination under international law. I argue that the right to self-determination entitles each national polity to determine the laws and institutions by which it is governed within its territory. Extraterritorial lawmaking violates the right to self-determination when it subjects peoples to legal norms they have not freely endorsed. This insight calls for a paradigm shift in how international lawyers evaluate extraterritoriality, with broad ramifications for legal theory and practice.
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
10-2024
Publication Information
118 American Journal of International Law 607-658 (2024)
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Repository Citation
Criddle, Evan J., "Extraterritoriality's Empire: How Self-Determination Limits Extraterritorial Lawmaking" (2024). Faculty Publications. 2244.
https://scholarship.law.wm.edu/facpubs/2244