Personal jurisdiction is a court's jurisdiction over the parties, as determined by the facts in evidence, which bind the parties to a lawsuit, as opposed to subject-matter jurisdiction, which is jurisdiction over the law involved in the suit. Without personal jurisdiction over a party, a court's rulings or decrees cannot be enforced upon that party, except by comity; i.e., to the extent that the sovereign which has jurisdiction over the party allows the court to enforce them upon that party. A court that has personal jurisdiction has both the authority to rule on the law and facts of a suit and the power to enforce its decision upon a party to the suit. In some cases, territorial jurisdiction may also constrain a court's reach, such as preventing hearing of a case concerning events occurring on foreign territory between two citizens of the home jurisdiction. A similar principle is that of standing or locus standi, which is the ability of a party to demonstrate to the court sufficient connection to and harm from the law or action challenged to support that party's participation in the case.
Sovereign immunity, or crown immunity, is a legal doctrine whereby a sovereign or state cannot commit a legal wrong and is immune from civil suit or criminal prosecution, strictly speaking in modern texts in its own courts. State immunity is a similar, stronger doctrine, that applies to foreign courts.
Gideon v. Wainwright, 372 U.S. 335 (1963), was a landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision in which the Court ruled that the Sixth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution requires U.S. states to provide attorneys to criminal defendants who are unable to afford their own. The case extended the right to counsel, which had been found under the Fifth and Sixth Amendments to impose requirements on the federal government, by imposing those requirements upon the states as well.
Isla de la Juventud is the second-largest Cuban island and the seventh-largest island in the West Indies. The island was called the Isle of Pines until 1978. It has an area 2,200 km2 (850 sq mi) and is 50 km (31 mi) south of the island of Cuba, across the Gulf of Batabanó. The island lies almost directly south of Havana and Pinar del Río and is a Special Municipality, not part of any province and is therefore administered directly by the central government of Cuba. The island has only one municipality, also named Isla de la Juventud.
The Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity (Libertad) Act of 1996, Pub. L.Tooltip Public Law 104–114 (text)(PDF), 110 Stat. 785, 22 U.S.C. §§ 6021–6091) is a United States federal law which strengthens and continues the United States embargo against Cuba. It extended the territorial application of the initial embargo to apply to foreign companies trading with Cuba, and penalized foreign companies allegedly "trafficking" in property formerly owned by U.S. citizens but confiscated by Cuba after the Cuban revolution. It also covers property formerly owned by Cubans who have since become U.S. citizens.
The Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act of 1976 (FSIA) is a United States law, codified at Title 28, §§ 1330, 1332, 1391(f), 1441(d), and 1602–1611 of the United States Code, that established criteria as to whether a foreign sovereign state is immune from the jurisdiction of the United States' federal or state courts. The Act also establishes specific procedures for service of process, attachment of property and execution of judgment in proceedings against a foreign state. The FSIA provides the exclusive basis and means to bring a civil suit against a foreign sovereign in the United States. It was signed into law by United States President Gerald Ford on October 21, 1976.
Missouri v. Holland, 252 U.S. 416 (1920) is a United States Supreme Court case concerning the extent to which international legal obligations are incorporated into federal law under the United States Constitution.
In the United States, the exclusionary rule is a legal rule, based on constitutional law, that prevents evidence collected or analyzed in violation of the defendant's constitutional rights from being used in a court of law. This may be considered an example of a prophylactic rule formulated by the judiciary in order to protect a constitutional right. The exclusionary rule may also, in some circumstances at least, be considered to follow directly from the constitutional language, such as the Fifth Amendment's command that no person "shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself" and that no person "shall be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law."
International Shoe Co. v. Washington, 326 U.S. 310 (1945), was a landmark decision of the Supreme Court of the United States in which the Court held that a party, particularly a corporation, may be subject to the jurisdiction of a state court if it has "minimum contacts" with that state. The ruling has important consequences for corporations involved in interstate commerce, their payments to state unemployment compensation funds, limits on the power of states imposed by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, the sufficiency of service of process, and, especially, personal jurisdiction.
Colorado River Water Conservation District v. United States, 424 U.S. 800 (1976), was a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States extensively refined the abstention doctrine to prevent duplicative litigation between state and federal courts.
The act-of-state doctrine is a principle in international law whereby acts done by a state in its own territory cannot be challenged by the national courts of another state.
Inevitable discovery is a doctrine in United States criminal procedure that permits admission of evidence that was obtained through illegal means if it would "inevitably" have been obtained regardless of the illegality. It is one of several exceptions to the exclusionary rule, or the related fruit-of-the-poisonous tree doctrine, which prevent evidence collected in violation of a defendant's constitutional rights from being admitted in court.
Heath v. Alabama, 474 U.S. 82 (1985), is a case in which the United States Supreme Court ruled that, because of the doctrine of "dual sovereignty", the double jeopardy clause of the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution does not prohibit one state from prosecuting and punishing somebody for an act of which they had already been convicted of and sentenced for in another state.
Questions over personal jurisdiction over foreign defendants in the United States arise when foreign nationals commit crimes against Americans, or when a person from or in a different country is sued in U.S. courts, or when events took place in another country. Such cases arise when crimes are committed on the high seas or on international flights, when crimes are alleged to be committed by or against Americans in foreign countries, or when crimes are committed by foreigners against Americans. The Internet also allows computer crime to cross international boundaries.
In United States law, the federal government as well as state and tribal governments generally enjoy sovereign immunity, also known as governmental immunity, from lawsuits. Local governments in most jurisdictions enjoy immunity from some forms of suit, particularly in tort. The Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act provides foreign governments, including state-owned companies, with a related form of immunity—state immunity—that shields them from lawsuits except in relation to certain actions relating to commercial activity in the United States. The principle of sovereign immunity in US law was inherited from the English common law legal maxim rex non potest peccare, meaning "the king can do no wrong." In some situations, sovereign immunity may be waived by law.
United States v. Graham, 846 F. Supp. 2d 384, was a Maryland District Court case in which the Court held that historical cell site location data is not protected by the Fourth Amendment. Reacting to the precedent established by the recent Supreme Court case United States v. Jones in conjunction with the application of the third party doctrine, Judge Richard D. Bennett found that "information voluntarily disclosed to a third party ceases to enjoy Fourth Amendment protection" because that information no longer belongs to the consumer, but rather to the telecommunications company that handles the transmissions records. The historical cell site location data is then not subject to the privacy protections afforded by the Fourth Amendment standard of probable cause, but rather to the Stored Communications Act, which governs the voluntary or compelled disclosure of stored electronic communications records.
Charles Dickerman Williams was an American lawyer who was known as a freedom of speech advocate. In 1951, the president appointed him chief legal officer for the U.S. Commerce Department.
The mosaic theory is a legal doctrine in American courts for considering issues of information collection, government transparency, and search and seizure, especially in cases involving invasive or large-scale data collection by government entities. The theory takes its name from mosaic tile art: while an entire picture can be seen from a mosaic's tiles at a distance, no clear picture emerges from viewing a single tile in isolation. The mosaic theory calls for a cumulative understanding of data collection by law enforcement and analyzes searches "as a collective sequence of steps rather than individual steps."
Penguin Books Ltd. v. India Book Distributors and Others, was a 1984 Delhi High Court court case. Penguin Books Ltd. of England brought a suit for perpetual injunction against the respondents, India Book Distributors of New Delhi, to restrain them from infringing Penguin's territorial license in 23 books, the subject matter of the suit.
