The Prosecute/Extradite Dilemma: Concurrent Criminal Jurisdiction and Global Governance
UC Davis Journal of International Law and Policy, Vol. 16, p. 101, 2010
38 Pages Posted: 23 Sep 2009 Last revised: 23 Apr 2010
Date Written: September 22, 2009
Abstract
In an increasingly mobile and interconnected world, national criminal laws interact transnationally through choices between extradition and prosecution in individual cases. The prosecute/extradite dilemma is a critical site of global governance – a decentralized site of interaction between national criminal laws that shapes how national and international interests are articulated and mediated. While criminal laws reflect a state’s fundamental norms, effective global governance requires a normative assessment of when a state should – and more crucially, when it should not – seek to further those norms when multiple countries have a basis for applying their criminal laws to particular conduct. This paper offers a conceptual framework for such an assessment, with particular emphasis on extraterritorial application of U.S. criminal laws.
Keywords: Jurisdiction, international criminal law, aut dedere aut judicare, global governance, extradition, extraterritorial
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