Extraterritorial Application of American Criminal Law

Charles Doyle
Senior Specialist in American Public Law

Criminal law is usually territorial. It is a matter of the law of the place where it occurs. Nevertheless, a number of American criminal laws apply outside of the United States. Application is generally a question of legislative intent, expressed or implied. In either case, it most often involves crimes committed aboard a ship or airplane, crimes condemned by international treaty, crimes relating to government employees or property overseas, or crimes that have an impact in this country even if planned or committed in part elsewhere.

Although the crimes over which the United States has extraterritorial jurisdiction may be many, so are the obstacles to their enforcement. For both practical and diplomatic reasons, criminal investigations within another country require the acquiescence, consent, or preferably the assistance, of the authorities of the host country. The United States has mutual legal assistance treaties with several countries designed to formalize such cooperative law enforcement assistance. Searches and interrogations carried out jointly with foreign officials, certainly if they involve Americans, must be conducted within the confines of the Fourth and Fifth Amendments. And the Sixth Amendment imposes limits upon the use in American criminal trials of depositions taken abroad.

The nation’s recently negotiated extradition treaties address some of the features of the nation’s earlier agreements which complicate extradition for extraterritorial offenses, that is, dual criminality requirements, reluctance to recognize extraterritorial jurisdiction, and exemptions on the basis of nationality or political offenses. To further facilitate the prosecution of federal crimes with extraterritorial application Congress has enacted special venue, statute of limitations, and evidentiary statutes. To further cooperative efforts, it enacted the Foreign Evidence Request Efficiency Act, P.L. 111-79, which authorizes federal courts to issue search warrants, subpoenas and other orders to facilitate criminal investigations in this country on behalf of foreign law enforcement officials.

This report is available in an abridged version, stripped of its attachments, bibliography, footnotes, and most of its citations to authority, as CRS Report RS22497, Extraterritorial Application of American Criminal Law: An Abbreviated Sketch, by Charles Doyle.


Date of Report: February 15, 2012
Number of Pages: 76
Order Number: 94-166
Price: $29.95

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