Prosecuting Terrorists as Criminals and the Limits of Extraterritorial Jurisdiction

(Excerpt) The remainder of this Article is structured as follows. Part I discusses the United States government\u27s current use of the Article III courts to combat global terrorism. First, it reviews data to show that there has been a whopping number of extraterritorial prosecutions for terrorism crimes brought since 9/11. Second, it surveys the case law to demonstrate that U.S. courts have failed to develop a due process test for assessing extra-jurisdictionality in those terrorism cases, and that this has been problematic because several cases have raised due process questions. Part II puts the discussion in Part I in context by exploring the larger body of United States law on extraterritorial criminal jurisdiction. First, Part II.A shows that the lack of a due process doctrine for limiting terrorism prosecutions is actually par for the course; as a whole, federal court opinions allowing for the extraterritorial application of the criminal law have been largely silent on the Due Process Clause. Next, Part II.B claims that the reason for this state of the doctrine is historical. Extraterritorial crimes necessitating a due process analysis only date back to 1980. In Part III, this Article shifts to a normative argument. Drawing on domestic criminal law in Part III.A and on the law concerning the extraterritorial enforcement of federal civil statutes in Part III.B, this Article argues that the absence of a Due Process Clause test for prosecuting overseas crimes is inconsistent with core tenants in American law. Part III.C examines drug-trafficking cases in the Ninth Circuit since the 1990s, the one body of cases in which judges have begun to fill the holes. In the Conclusion, this Article seeks to apply the lessons from Part III to contemporary extraterritorial terrorism cases. It sketches the outlines of a Due Process Clause test that U.S. courts should apply in terrorism prosecutions going forward

Prosecuting Terrorists as Criminals and the Limits of Extraterritorial Jurisdiction

(Excerpt) The remainder of this Article is structured as follows. Part I discusses the United States government\u27s current use of the Article III courts to combat global terrorism. First, it reviews data to show that there has been a whopping number of extraterritorial prosecutions for terrorism crimes brought since 9/11. Second, it surveys the case law to demonstrate that U.S. courts have failed to develop a due process test for assessing extra-jurisdictionality in those terrorism cases, and that this has been problematic because several cases have raised due process questions. Part II puts the discussion in Part I in context by exploring the larger body of United States law on extraterritorial criminal jurisdiction. First, Part II.A shows that the lack of a due process doctrine for limiting terrorism prosecutions is actually par for the course; as a whole, federal court opinions allowing for the extraterritorial application of the criminal law have been largely silent on the Due Process Clause. Next, Part II.B claims that the reason for this state of the doctrine is historical. Extraterritorial crimes necessitating a due process analysis only date back to 1980. In Part III, this Article shifts to a normative argument. Drawing on domestic criminal law in Part III.A and on the law concerning the extraterritorial enforcement of federal civil statutes in Part III.B, this Article argues that the absence of a Due Process Clause test for prosecuting overseas crimes is inconsistent with core tenants in American law. Part III.C examines drug-trafficking cases in the Ninth Circuit since the 1990s, the one body of cases in which judges have begun to fill the holes. In the Conclusion, this Article seeks to apply the lessons from Part III to contemporary extraterritorial terrorism cases. It sketches the outlines of a Due Process Clause test that U.S. courts should apply in terrorism prosecutions going forward

Comparison of geometric morphometric outline methods in the discrimination of age-related differences in feather shape

BACKGROUND: Geometric morphometric methods of capturing information about curves or outlines of organismal structures may be used in conjunction with canonical variates analysis (CVA) to assign specimens to groups or populations based on their shapes. This methodological paper examines approaches to optimizing the classification of specimens based on their outlines. This study examines the performance of four approaches to the mathematical representation of outlines and two different approaches to curve measurement as applied to a collection of feather outlines. A new approach to the dimension reduction necessary to carry out a CVA on this type of outline data with modest sample sizes is also presented, and its performance is compared to two other approaches to dimension reduction. RESULTS: Two semi-landmark-based methods, bending energy alignment and perpendicular projection, are shown to produce roughly equal rates of classification, as do elliptical Fourier methods and the extended eigenshape method of outline measurement. Rates of classification were not highly dependent on the number of points used to represent a curve or the manner in which those points were acquired. The new approach to dimensionality reduction, which utilizes a variable number of principal component (PC) axes, produced higher cross-validation assignment rates than either the standard approach of using a fixed number of PC axes or a partial least squares method. CONCLUSION: Classification of specimens based on feather shape was not highly dependent of the details of the method used to capture shape information. The choice of dimensionality reduction approach was more of a factor, and the cross validation rate of assignment may be optimized using the variable number of PC axes method presented herein

Complex body size trends in the evolution of sloths (Xenarthra: Pilosa)

Background Extant sloths present an evolutionary conundrum in that the two living genera are superficially similar (small-bodied, folivorous, arboreal) but diverged from one another approximately 30 million years ago and are phylogenetically separated by a radiation of medium to massive, mainly ground-dwelling, taxa. Indeed, the species in the two living genera are among the smallest, and perhaps most unusual, of the 50+ known sloth species, and must have independently and convergently evolved small size and arboreality. In order to accurately reconstruct sloth evolution, it is critical to incorporate their extinct diversity in analyses. Here, we used a dataset of 57 species of living and fossil sloths to examine changes in body mass mean and variance through their evolution, employing a general time-variable model that allows for analysis of evolutionary trends in continuous characters within clades lacking fully-resolved phylogenies, such as sloths. Results Our analyses supported eight models, all of which partition sloths into multiple subgroups, suggesting distinct modes of body size evolution among the major sloth lineages. Model-averaged parameter values supported trended walks in most clades, with estimated rates of body mass change ranging as high as 126 kg/million years for the giant ground sloth clades Megatheriidae and Nothrotheriidae. Inclusion of living sloth species in the analyses weakened reconstructed rates for their respective groups, with estimated rates for Megalonychidae (large to giant ground sloths and the extant two-toed sloth) were four times higher when the extant genus Choloepus was excluded. Conclusions Analyses based on extant taxa alone have the potential to oversimplify or misidentify macroevolutionary patterns. This study demonstrates the impact that integration of data from the fossil record can have on reconstructions of character evolution and establishes that body size evolution in sloths was complex, but dominated by trended walks towards the enormous sizes exhibited in some recently extinct forms

International Law at Home: Enforcing Treaties in U.S. Courts

A deep puzzle lies at the heart of international law. It is “law” binding on the United States, and yet it is not always enforceable in the courts. One of the great challenges for scholars, judges, and practitioners alike has been to make some sense of this puzzle - some might call it a paradox - and to figure out when international law can be used in U.S. courts and when it cannot. This article aims to contribute to this conversation by examining the status of treaties in U.S. courts - and how the international legal commitments expressed in our treaties “come home” - in three interlocking steps. First, it seeks to provide an account of the legaland historical context of Medellín v. Texas - examining both the case law that led up to the decision and how the lower courts have since responded. Second, the article aims to place direct enforcement of international law through private rights of action into broader context in a second way - by looking at all the ways in which international law can be enforced in U.S. courts. We argue that the direct enforcement of treaties called into doubt in the wake of Medellín is only a part of the picture. Treaties are enforcedin U.S. courts in several other ways as well - through what we term “indirect enforcement,” “defensive enforcement,” and“interpretive enforcement.” Finally, the article considers steps that can be taken to increase the likelihood that treaties will continue to be enforced, even in a post-Medellin world. To this end, we offer three proposals for how each branch of the federal government can strengthen the enforcement of international law

International Law at Home: Enforcing Treaties in U.S. Courts

While the landmark 2008 Supreme Court decision Medellin v. Texas upended the presumption that treaties creating private rights of action are self-executing, jeopardizing the judiciary\u27s power to enforce several important international treaties, this Article explains why the Medellin decision does not sound the death knell for enforcement of treaties in U.S. courts. The Article begins by providing an account of the broader legal and historical context of Medellin-examining both the case law that led up to the decision and ways in which the lower courts have begun to respond to it. At the start of the twentieth century, the courts applied a strong presumption that treaties could be used by private litigants in court to press their claims. As international treaties-and international human rights treaties in particular-proliferated after World War II, however, the courts largely abandoned this presumption in favor of enforcement

Human Rights Abroad: When Do Human Rights Treaty Obligations Apply Extraterritorially?

The second half of the twentieth century saw an explosion of human rights law. Before World War II, there were almost no significant multilateral human rights agreements. In the years following the war, sixteen multilateral agreements were concluded through the United Nations alone. These twentieth-century agreements were distinctive from mostinternational law that came before them in that they placed the international community between a sovereign state and its own citizens. No longer couldstates act within their own borders with absolute impunity. Yet even before the ink was dry on these post-war agreements, a question emerged thatremains a subject of intense debate today: What limits, if any, do human rights agreements place on the behavior of states outside their own territory? In this Article, we begin to answer that question. We do so by examining developments in the extraterritorial application of human rights treaties in foreign jurisdictions and international tribunals across the globe. Building upon earlier scholarship, we review the recent developments in the jurisprudence of the Supreme Court and Federal Court of Appeal ofCanada, the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom, the European Court of Human Rights, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, the International Court of Justice, the Committee Against Torture, and the Human Rights Committee of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Our goal in this cross-national examination is to discover whether these courts have developed a coherent standard or approach from which the United States might learn