For example, many countries have laws which give their criminal courts jurisdiction to try prosecutions for piracy, sexual offences against children, computer crimes and/or terrorism committed outside their national boundaries.
In its broad application, the term refers to criminal acts that were committed outside the sovereign territory of a prosecuting state.
In 2017, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and European Union President Jean-Claude Juncker criticized the draft of new U.S. sanctions against Russia targeting the EU–Russia energy projects.
[12] Extraterritorial jurisdiction in the area of antitrust faces various limitations, such as the problem of accessing foreign-based evidence,[13] as well as the difficulties of challenged anticompetitive conduct arising from foreign state involvement.
[20] The Female Genital Mutilation Act 2003 asserted extraterritorial jurisdiction to close the loophole whereby girls could be taken outside the UK to undergo FGM procedures.
In the U.S., many states have laws or even constitutional provisions which permit cities to make certain decisions about the land beyond the town's incorporated limits.
The U.S. Criminal Code asserts the following items to fall within the special maritime and territorial jurisdiction of the United States, much of which is extraterritorial in nature:[27] Individuals involved in doping at major international sporting events can be sanctioned by the United States via the Rodchenkov Act if American companies are involved in sponsoring those events or the American financial system is utilized by the organizers.
Generally, the U.S. founding fathers and early courts believed that American laws could not have jurisdiction over sovereign countries.
In a 1909 Supreme Court case, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes introduced what came to be known as the "presumption against extraterritoriality," making explicit this judicial preference that U.S. laws not be applied to other countries.