Im not an American citizen. (My maternal grandfather is but I rather suspect that doesnt matter.)
Can I be bound by american laws outside of the US?
Ill give you a few hypotethicals to ponder.
The age of consent in Sweden (and a lot of Europe) is 16.
Your daughter is 17. Youve sent her over her to well… stop her whining.
During her travels she meets Westrogothia, the goodlooking and rather charming 30 year foreigner. This beeing the decandent europe naturaly things lead to the bed.
Totally legal in sweden.
When home she discoveres shes got herself a half swedish bastard.
Can I be extridicted to the good ole USA to be flogged and waterboarded as an enemy of the state?
I quite enjoy watching a few American tvshows.
To get em early and sans the commercials I bittorrent them.
This would be legal in sweden due to an old precedent that says its legal to record (vhs) shows of the telly and watch them.
Now FOX discovers theres actually people outside USA and they arent getting money from them and decides I should probably be executed (copyright infringement beeing the most heinous crime known to tvexecs).
Could I be extradicted to the USA and drawn and quartered as public enemy nr1?
IANAL, I just play one on TV. There are some crimes, such as terrorism-related, or those of committing/attempted/completed murder abroad of US citizens (while a citizen yourself) that, anecdotally, I’ve read online. I’ll have to dig for cites. John Walker Lindh comes to mind, though.
The Uniform Code of Military Justice is specifically written to apply to military members, with a global jurisdiction. So, if I, as a military member, commit a murder or rape in Somalia or Italy, I can be prosecuted under military law. This is currently causing problems because of the contractors in Iraq who are non-military, but being actively involved in firefights: how do you prosecute someone for a military crime, who isn’t in the military.
So, it depends on the crime, and depends on whether or not the statute is written to be applied globally. Even if it isn’t global, there’s still the problem of extradition if you get caught.
Could they sue your ass in civil court? I don’t know. I would assume this would require your physical presence in that court to validate its jurisdiction over you (I could be wrong in this, but I’ve never heard of a civil decision being made in absentia).
Foreign visitors are bound by the laws of whatever country they are in. If the age of consent in your country is 16 and you knocked up a tourist, U.S. law wouldn’t apply. The only recourse for the tourist would be the laws of that country. So, if she wanted to go after you for child support, she conceivably could go after you in your nation’s courts if she felt like putting up with the time and expense of doing so.
You should leave our womenfolk alone though, just to be on the safe side.
To answer this question, I’m pretty sure there’s no such thing as extradition for civil matters (i.e. lawsuits between private parties such as 20th Century Fox and yourself), only for criminal matters; so you wouldn’t have to worry about being drawn & quartered, at least. Fox could decide to sue you in an American court, but even if it won, it could only go after assets that were held in the U.S. of A. Your life savings would be safe from seizure if they were held in the First National Bank of Sweden and Fox won a judgement against you under U.S. law.)
No, that’s not correct. If a plaintiff obtains a civil judgment from the US courts, and the judgment debtor has assets in a foreign jurisdiction, the plaintiff can try to enforce the judgment against the foreign assets by suing in the foreign court which has jurisdiction over those assets. Wiki summarises this point in its article on enforcement of foreign judgments:
So, not automatic that the plaintiff would be able to enforce the judgment against the foreign assets, but the possibility is there.
to repond to the OP, the question you’re asking about is the extra-territorial application of a nation’s laws. different nations take different approaches to this issue, so it’s not possible to generalise.
One factor is that a nation may assert jurisdiction over crimes committed by its own citizens in foreign countries.
for example, a lot of western countries are adopting “child sex tourism” laws, which say that if one of their citizens goes to a foreign country with lower ages of consent for sex, with the intent of having sex with a child who would be underage in their own country, that’s a crime and they can be prosecuted when they return.
another example is the US law which makes it a crime for a US company or individual to pay bribes in foreign countries, even if it’s an acceptable business practice in that foreign country.
a third US example is that the US requires its nationals to report their foreign income, even if they’re living in a foreign country, and the US may require them to pay income tax. (we’ve got some US posters who live abroad on the boards, so they can likely give better info on this than I can).
In all these cases, the country is asserting that its jurisdiction over its own citizens, even for their actions abroad.
Another basis for a country to apply its laws extra-judicially is by asserting that someone outside the country who is conspiring to break the laws of the country is committing a criminal offence. This is the basis that the US seized General Noriega of Panama - that he was conspiring to import drugs into the US. He was convicted in US federal court, even though his alleged acts were outside the country.
A third basis that is sometimes asserted is that a country will say that it has jurisdiction over crimes committed against its citizens in a foreign country. This is one of the more controversial ones, and I don’t know if it’s commonly used.
And then there’s the crimes of universal jurisdiction, of which the best historical example is piracy. By international law, it’s accepted that any country can apply its law against piracy to pirates that it catches, even if the pirates haven’t committed an offence in that country’s territorial waters.
[hijack] I’d look into that a bit more closely. The U.S. has a similar precedent making it a-okay to videotape shows off of your television, for personal backup/re-viewing use.
And yet it remains quite illegal to bittorrent the same show – the precedent (at least in the U.S.) is very specific to your television and VCR (and, I guess now, DVR).
Quite commonly, as far as I know (France, Spain, Mexico, for instance). It has to be a crime in both countries, though (except for things like “sex tourism laws” you mentioned).
And these countries, crimes committed by a citizen are prosecutable even when they have been committed in another country (once again, providing they are a crime in both countries).
There are also the cases of countries that unilaterally assert universal jurisdiction for a category of crime, so that for instance a Congolese could bring charges against a Brazilian for a crime committed in Slovenia. The most famous recent example having been Belgium for war crimes (they eventually had to strongly narrow the applicability of this universal jurisdiction, I don’t remember to what extent exactly, due to the deluge of complaints against high-ranking foreign officials).
It’s legal to buy Cuban cigars in Canada. AIUI it’s is illegal under U.S. law for an American to buy a Cuban cigar in Canada. Not that anyone (probably) is going to be busted for it, but technically it’s illegal.
And for American citizens to travel to Cuba, even via a third route. People were flying from the U.S. to Toronto and then catching a connection to Havana. A few years ago, they were being greeted with $1200 fines on their return home.
I never could understand how this could happen, though. Once I step foot on Canadian soil, I would think that American law was back there and that now I am under Canadian law.
For example, I can carry a gun in Florida, but now that I am in Canada, I can’t have one in my possession, let alone carry it in public. I understand that. On the flip side, when I was 19, I could legally drink in Ontario, where I had to be 21 everywhere in the states. I understand that as well.
I am a vistor to another land, and have to respect the law there. In the same vein, why do I also have to respect U.S. law if I want to buy a Cuban cigar, or go to the airport and fly to Havana? What continues to give the U.S. jurisdiction over me?
Kind of makes those $75 Cohiba Esplendidos that are available in Canadian tobacconists seem reasonably priced now, doesn’t it?
Seriously, I’ve wondered about this same question for some time. I used to have a number of American business associates who would put “buying a Cuban cigar” high on their list of Things To Do In Their Free Time While In Toronto On Business. They well knew it was illegal for them to do so, but they also knew that Canada was outside of any US law enforcement body’s jurisdiction. So they bought and smoked their Havanas in Toronto, and went home with the US government none the wiser.
How could the US government prosecute somebody who did this? Catching the American in the act of purchasing a Cuban cigar in Toronto is out of the question, due to the jurisdictional issue; and unless the American tries to take his purchases back to the US, it would seem that the US government would never know. Isn’t this law rather toothless, or am I missing something?
Which, since the US has a range of ages of consent amongst the states raises its own interesting questions.
I asked about this with regards to transportation of minors a while back and unfortunately didn’t get an answer, because the way I read it, (and IANAL or even play one on TV), there seemed to be odd implications.
If we reverse Westrogothia’s scenario, and cast him as the hunky 17 year old Swede, with his US paramour being the 30 year old, then she would appear (to me) to be in violation of federal law (even if she was from say, Nevada, with its age of consent of 16). So… legal in Sweden, legal in Nevada… but illegal because international travel was involved?
I’ve been told that even if you are caught at the border trying to bring some Cuban cigars or rum back into the U.S., as long as it is a small personal amount, (e.g. a couple of boxes of cigars or a couple of bottles of rum) they will simply confiscate them, lecture you, and send you on your way.
Now, if you have your trunk, behind the seats, and spare tire well stuffed full of Cuban goods, obviously for resale, then you are in some trouble.
Having smoked Cuban cigars, I know that they are good, but not THAT good. I link it to Coors beer on the east coast back when you couldn’t get it. People fawned about how awesome it was, and when anyone went west, they brought back a case or two to keep for special occasions.
Now that you can buy Coors at the local convenience store, people don’t care about it at all. It is the temptation of the forbidden fruit…
The US congress has passed laws with extra-territorial effect, making it an offence for US citizens to travel to Cuba (although there are exceptions), and an offence to buy Cuban products that are under embargo. Since there’s no constitutional restriction on extra-territorial laws at the federal level in the US, the federal executive and federal courts are required to enforce those laws.
Another good example of an extra-territorial US law is the Uniform Code of Military Justice, which applies to US military personnel whether they’re in the United States or in a foreign country.
American citizens abroad are subject to the Protect Act regarding sex with minors, and a handful of people do end up in prison under it for acts committed abroad, even when those acts are permitted under local law.
It was my impression that they generally would not do so, on First Amendment and policy grounds, given that English libel law places the burden of proving a “truth defense” on the defendant.
