Territorial jurisdiction (United States)

Last updated January 23, 2024

Territorial jurisdiction in United States law refers to a court's power over events and persons within the bounds of a particular geographic territory. If a court does not have territorial jurisdiction over the events or persons within it, then the court cannot bind the defendant to an obligation or adjudicate any rights involving them. Territorial jurisdiction is to be distinguished from subject-matter jurisdiction, which is the power of a court to render a judgment concerning a certain subject matter, or personal jurisdiction, which is the power of a court to render a judgment concerning particular persons, wherever they may be. Personal jurisdiction, territorial jurisdiction, subject-matter jurisdiction, and proper notice to the defendant are prerequisites for a valid judgment.

The types of territorial jurisdiction

Types of jurisdictional territory within the international system

Incorporated national territory, within which all residents are considered American citizens.
Unincorporated national territory. This can include territories in which the residents do not have full rights.
Trust territories or dependencies. These are territories with some of the attributes of a nation-state but not full independence, administered by a nation, perhaps with international sanction.
Occupied territories. These are usually the result of war and conquest, and ruled by martial law imposed by the conqueror.
International commons. Territory not under the jurisdiction of any nation, but open to use by all, subject to treaty restrictions. This includes the high seas beyond coastal territorial limits, Antarctica, and Outer Space.
National flag vessels at sea. The vessel is considered to be part of the territory of the nation whose flag it flies, and subject to the laws of that nation. A vessel without a national flag may be considered a stateless vessel. A stateless vessel is, on the high seas, not subject to any State's exclusive jurisdiction.
Diplomatic grounds. The grounds of foreign embassies and some consulates, like vessels at sea, are considered part of the territory of the nation they represent. Contrary to popular belief, however, diplomatic missions do not enjoy full extraterritorial status and are not sovereign territory of the represented state. Rather, the premises of diplomatic missions remain under the jurisdiction of the host state while being afforded special privileges (such as immunity from most local laws) by the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations.
Foreign military bases. Like diplomatic facilities, they may or may not constitute territory of the nation whose forces are stationed there, depending on a status of forces agreement.
Extraterritorial jurisdiction. This is asserted by most nations over their military and diplomatic personnel while abroad, and by some nations over subjects like piracy and offenses against the law of nations, such as "crimes against humanity" or genocide, or taxation of income of citizens obtained from foreign sources.

Types of jurisdictional territory within a nation

This will vary from one nation to another, but we can illustrate the types by examining the United States, and how there can be different territorial jurisdiction for different subjects:

Territories over which the central government has exclusive jurisdiction for a broad range of subjects. Created by U.S. Constitution, Art. I Sec. 8 Cl. 17.
Territories over which the state government has exclusive jurisdiction for a broad range of subjects. State territory excluding territory ceded under Art. I Sec. 8 Cl. 17.
Unincorporated territories over which the central government has exclusive jurisdiction under Art. IV Sec. 3 Cl. 2.
State territory over which the central government has jurisdiction, either exclusive or concurrent, on a few specific subjects.
County territory within which the county government has exclusive or concurrent jurisdiction with the state.
Township territory within which the town government has exclusive or concurrent jurisdiction with the county or state.
Federal judicial districts within which the court for that district has exclusive jurisdiction.
State or local judicial districts within which the court for that district has exclusive jurisdiction.
Neighborhood associations that may exercise townlike powers over their neighborhoods.
Administrative district territories, with powers to make rules and adjudicate cases concerning things like utilities, transportation facitlies, etc.

Constitutional limits

The Supreme Court of the United States has held that constitutional requirements of due process limit the exercise of subject or personal jurisdiction beyond territorial limits.^{[ citation needed ]} The same outer territorial boundaries for subject jurisdiction apply in both state courts and federal courts. Moreover, because of Rule 4 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (FRCP 4), a federal court ordinarily applies the personal jurisdiction statutes (e.g., long-arm statutes) of the state in which it sits, even when the state has not extended personal jurisdiction to its territorial limits. (Some states, such as California, have long-arm statutes that give their courts personal jurisdiction to the extent constitutionally permitted.) In some exceptional circumstances, FRCP 4 grants a federal court personal jurisdiction when the law of the state in which it sits would not.

Territorial jurisdiction problems are acute in cases involving business transactions conducted across state lines, where the defendant may not have set foot in the other state, but still conducted affairs with the other state's residents through correspondence, the shipment of goods, or indirect agents. Even more difficult, and more unsettled, territorial jurisdiction issues arise in stream of commerce cases. In the quintessential stream of commerce case, a defendant in one state sells a widget to a manufacturer in the same state, which incorporates the widget into a retail product and sells it to a consumer in another state, who then sues claiming injury from the widget. The leading Supreme Court stream of commerce case ^[1] resulted in a split, failing to clarify the issue.

Internet cases raise several troublesome territorial jurisdiction problems. For example, a website may be viewed anywhere in the world, though it is hosted in Anguilla and operated by a California citizen. Courts must decide in which locations, under what circumstances, the exercise of territorial jurisdiction over the citizen for claims arising from the website comports with traditional notions of fair play and substantial justice. For more, see Personal jurisdiction in internet cases.

Relationship to venue

Venue and territorial jurisdiction are closely related for practical purposes. A change of venue may be sought either within the territorial jurisdiction of a court, or with the consent of the receiving jurisdiction and the parties, within the jurisdiction of another court, provided it has jurisdiction over the same laws.

Related Research Articles

Federal jurisdiction refers to the legal scope of the government's powers in the United States of America.

Jurisdiction is the legal term for the legal authority granted to a legal entity to enact justice. In federations like the United States, the concept of jurisdiction applies at multiple levels.

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Extraterritoriality</span> State of being exempted from the jurisdiction of local law

In international law, extraterritoriality is the state of being exempted from the jurisdiction of local law, usually as the result of diplomatic negotiations.

In an extradition, one jurisdiction delivers a person accused or convicted of committing a crime in another jurisdiction, over to the other's law enforcement. It is a cooperative law enforcement procedure between the two jurisdictions and depends on the arrangements made between them. In addition to legal aspects of the process, extradition also involves the physical transfer of custody of the person being extradited to the legal authority of the requesting jurisdiction.

Extraterritorial jurisdiction (ETJ) is the legal ability of a government to exercise authority beyond its normal boundaries.

In the United States, a territory is any extent of region under the sovereign jurisdiction of the federal government of the United States, including all waters. The United States asserts sovereign rights for exploring, exploiting, conserving, and managing its territory. This extent of territory is all the area belonging to, and under the dominion of, the United States federal government for administrative and other purposes. The United States total territory includes a subset of political divisions.

Corporative federalism is a system of federalism not based on the common federalist idea of relative land area or nearest spheres of influence for governance, but on fiduciary jurisdiction to corporate personhood in which groups that are considered incorporated members of their own prerogative structure by willed agreement can delegate their individual effective legislature within the overall government.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Subject-matter jurisdiction</span> Type of jurisdictional court authority

Subject-matter jurisdiction, also called jurisdiction ratione materiae, is a legal doctrine holding that a court can only hear and decide cases of a particular type. The subject matter jurisdiction of a court may be described as either limited jurisdiction, meaning it is able to hear only certain types of cases, or general jurisdiction, meaning it is presumed able to hear and decide all types of cases. For instance, a bankruptcy court only has the authority to hear bankruptcy cases.

In rem jurisdiction is a legal term describing the power a court may exercise over property or a "status" against a person over whom the court does not have in personam jurisdiction. Jurisdiction in rem assumes the property or status is the primary object of the action, rather than personal liabilities not necessarily associated with the property.

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.

Criminal jurisdiction is a term used in constitutional law and public law to describe the power of courts to hear a case brought by a state accusing a defendant of the commission of a crime. It is relevant in three distinct situations:

to regulate the relationship between states, or between one state and another;
where the nation is a federation, to regulate the relationship between the federal courts and the domestic courts of those states comprising the federation; and
where a state only has, to a greater or lesser extent, a single and unified system of law, it is the law of criminal procedure to regulate what cases each classification of court within the judicial system shall adjudicate upon. People must be tried in the same state the crime is committed.

Long-arm jurisdiction is the ability of local courts to exercise jurisdiction over foreign defendants, whether on a statutory basis or through a court's inherent jurisdiction. This jurisdiction permits a court to hear a case against a defendant and enter a binding judgment against a defendant residing outside the jurisdiction concerned.

The Schooner Exchange v. M'Faddon, 11 U.S. 116 (1812), is a United States Supreme Court case on the jurisdiction of federal courts over a claim against a friendly foreign military vessel visiting an American port. The court interpreted customary international law to determine that there was no jurisdiction.

In United States law, a federal enclave is a parcel of federal property within a state that is under the "Special Maritime and Territorial Jurisdiction of the United States". While these enclaves, which are used for all the many Federal governmental purposes, such as post offices, arsenals, dams; road; etc., usually are owned by the Government, the United States in many cases has received similar jurisdictional authority over privately owned properties which it leases, or privately owned and occupied properties which are located within the exterior boundaries of a large area as to which a State has ceded jurisdiction to the United States.

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.

Morrison v. National Australia Bank, 561 U.S. 247 (2010), was a United States Supreme Court case concerning the extraterritorial effect of U.S. securities legislation. Morrison extinguished two species of securities class-action claims that had proliferated in preceding years: "foreign-cubed" claims, in which foreign plaintiffs sued foreign issuers for losses on transactions on foreign exchanges, and "foreign-squared" claims, brought by domestic plaintiffs against foreign issuers for losses on transactions on foreign exchanges.

The Taney Court heard thirty criminal law cases, approximately one per year. Notable cases include Prigg v. Pennsylvania (1842), United States v. Rogers (1846), Ableman v. Booth (1858), Ex parte Vallandigham (1861), and United States v. Jackalow (1862).

The Crimes Act of 1790, formally titled An Act for the Punishment of Certain Crimes Against the United States, defined some of the first federal crimes in the United States and expanded on the criminal procedure provisions of the Judiciary Act of 1789. The Crimes Act was a "comprehensive statute defining an impressive variety of federal crimes".

The Maritime Drug Law Enforcement Act (MDLEA), implemented in 1986 by the United States, is a piece of legislation combatting the illegal drug trade. Enacted through congress, the MDLEA establishes that it is illegal for anyone on board a vessel belonging to the United States or within their jurisdiction to deliberately produce or disseminate psychotropic substances. The act is notable for its extraterritorial jurisdiction and its lack of nexus requirement. The Act provides that the United States jurisdiction reaches any vessel "registered in a foreign nation where the flag nation has consented or waived objection to the enforcement of the United States law by the United States." In recent years the MDLEA has been met with controversy as it permits the U.S. Coast Guard the authority to reach and imprison drug traffickers who are operating over international waters and foreign citizens who are not located on board the watercraft but operating overseas or as a conspirator.

References

A Dissertation on the Nature and Extent of the Jurisdiction of the Courts of the United States , Peter Stephen Du Ponceau (1824).
Conflict of Criminal Laws, Edward S. Stimson (1936) Foundation Press
Jurisdiction over Federal Areas within the States (1954)

Notes

↑ Asahi Metal Industry Co. v. Superior Court, 480 U.S. 102 (1987). Decided February 24, 1987.

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[1] Asahi Metal Industry Co. v. Superior Court, 480 U.S. 102 (1987). Decided February 24, 1987.

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