Extraterritoriality of statutes and regulations

This chapter addresses the extraterritoriality of statutes and regulations, which is to say law that is made by the legislative and administrative organs of states, focusing on the United States and, to a lesser extent, the European Union. The United States has a long history of extraterritorial regulation, and its approach to determining the geographic scope of statutes is well developed and relies primarily on domestic rules of statutory interpretation rather than on customary international law. European nations have often been on the receiving end of US extraterritoriality and have sometimes vigorously opposed such regulation. Today, however, the EU has itself become an important global regulator and actively applies it laws extraterritorially in many fields. In comparison to the US approach, the EU gives more prominence to customary international law.