Extraterritorial Financial Regulation: Why E.T. Can't Come Home

Authors

John C. Coffee Jr., Columbia Law SchoolFollow

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2014

Abstract

This Essay begins with a deliberately off-putting title: extraterritorial financial regulation. Old-time "conflict of laws" scholars would call this an oxymoron, pointing to recent Supreme Court decisions – most notably, Morrison v. National Australia Bank Ltd. and Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum Co. – that have applied a strong presumption against extraterritoriality to curb the reach of U.S. law. Even those international law scholars who are sympathetic to the regulation of multinational financial institutions might prefer to avoid this term and talk instead of "global financial regulation" because they conceptualize international financial regulation as implemented through networks of cooperating multinational institutions applying broad principles of "soft law" on a consensual basis. Both perspectives, however, miss much, and the unfashionable word – "extraterritorial" – cannot be avoided.

Disciplines

Banking and Finance Law | Business Organizations Law | International Law | Law

Recommended Citation

John C. Coffee Jr., Extraterritorial Financial Regulation: Why E.T. Can't Come Home, 99 Cornell L. Rev. 1259 (2014).
Available at: https://scholarship.law.columbia.edu/faculty_scholarship/516