Extraterritoriality
For example, such is the immunity granted to diplomatic missions, military bases of foreign countries, or offices of the United Nations.
During the 13th and 14th centuries, the Italian sea republics of Genoa, Venice and Pisa obtained extraterritoriality for their merchants who operated in designated quarters (Pera and Galata) in the Byzantine capital, Constantinople, as well as in Egypt and the Barbary states.
[6] A series of capitulations were made in the form of treaties between the Sublime Porte and Western nations, from the sixteenth through the early nineteenth centuries.
The laws and regulations created for Ottoman subjects to abide by often did not apply to European nationals conducting business and trade in the provinces of the empire, and thus various capitulations were brought into effect with respect to many foreign powers.
[10] Historically, the United States has had extraterritoriality agreements with 15 nations with non-Western legal systems: Algeria, Borneo, China, Egypt, Iran, Japan, South Korea, Libya, Madagascar, Morocco, Samoa, Tanzania, Thailand, Tunisia, and the Ottoman Empire.
The maternity ward of Ottawa Civic Hospital in which Princess Margriet was born was temporarily declared to be extraterritorial by the Canadian government.
This was done to ensure that the newborn would derive her citizenship from her mother only, thus making her solely Dutch, which could be very important had the child been male, and as such, the heir of Princess Juliana.
[15] The most famous cases of extraterritoriality in East Asia are those of 19th century China, Japan, and Siam, emerging from what is termed the "unequal treaties".
The practice of extraterritoriality, however, was not confined to the 19th century or these nations,[16] as the monarchs and governments of pre-modern East Asia primarily claimed sovereignty over people rather than tracts of land.
[17] The creation of extraterritoriality for treaty nations "was not introduced into East Asia ex novo, but built atop a long-standing legal edifice".
[18] For example, the ruling Manchu elite possessed legal privileges which placed them outside the jurisdiction of local ethnically Chinese administrators.
[7] Before the 1842 Treaty of Nanking, which ended the First Opium War, foreign merchants were not satisfied with the state of the Qing legal system.
No compromise was reached; and the Qing government was successful in preventing foreigners from visiting the Chinese interior with extraterritorial privileges.
[35] By the early 20th century, some Western powers were willing to relinquish extraterritorial rights given the improved state of Chinese legal reform.
[36] For example, the 1902 Sino-British "Mackay treaty"'s article 12 read: China having expressed a strong desire to reform her judicial system ... [the United Kingdom] will ... be pretreated to relinquish her extra-territorial rights when she is satisfied that the state of the Chinese laws, the arrangement for her administration, and other considerations warrant her in so doing.
[25] While efforts at legal reform were pursued in earnest in the last decade of the Qing dynasty,[36] what was actually achieved failed to meaningfully address this lack of law in the areas of contracts, trade, or commerce.
[38][39] The success of the Northern Expedition in strengthening the authority of the Chinese republic in the mid-1920s led many governments to give up their more minor treaty ports without a fight.
[41][42] As a result, a commission was established in 1926 that published a detailed report which contained its findings and recommendations for the Chinese legal system.
[2] With part of its legitimacy resting on claims to strengthening national sovereignty and territorial integrity, the Constitution of the People's Republic of China explicitly states that foreigners must abide by PRC law.
[52] Having convinced the Western powers that its legal system was "sufficiently modern",[31] Japan succeeded in reforming its unequal status with Britain through the 1894 Anglo-Japanese Treaty of Commerce and Navigation, in which London would relinquish its Japanese extraterritorial rights within five years.
[54][53] After the Allied victory in 1945, the Mutual Security Assistance Pact, and its successor treaties, between the United States, to the modern day, grant US military personnel on American bases in Okinawa extraterritorial privileges.
Sir Robert Hermann Schomburgk, British Consul-General from 1859 to 1864, gives an account of his judicial training and responsibilities in a letter to his cousin dated 6 September 1860.
[58] Contrary to popular belief, diplomatic missions do not generally enjoy full extraterritorial status and are not sovereign territory of the represented state.
These are located in Belgium, Cuba, France, Gibraltar, Italy, Luxembourg, Mexico, Morocco, the Netherlands, Panama, Papua New Guinea, the Philippines, the Solomon Islands, Tunisia, and the United Kingdom.
