Saturday 8 December 2018

Is the rule of applying Long Arm Jurisdiction Statue broken?

The case against Ms. Meng Wanzhou is an application of Long Arm Jurisdiction Statue(LAJS). According to the accusation from Eastern NewYork (EDNY) court, the alleged fact breaking US law happened in Hongkong and the defendent is not a US citizen.

According to multiple authoritative sources[1], In Asahi Metal Industry Co. v. Superior Court, 480 U.S. 102 (1987), the Supreme Court clarified that even when the defendant has a minimum contact, a court's asserting jurisdiction over the defendant may still be improper as it would be unfair to the defendant. LAJS applicability here can be a subject which shall be retrospected seriously.

1): The legal basis of the accusation is possibly be either US domestic or UN resolution. But Eastern Newyork court is a US legal branch and not likely to be authorized by UN, we can safely assume it is US domestic law. To verify the statement, the original EDNY record needs to be obtained. A PACER account could be helpful if you have a credit card.

2): Even if the legal basis is a UN resolution, EDNY needs to follow a UN process to issue a warrant and request Canadian's extradition. If such a process is there for EDNY is out the discussion scope, so the assumption that this is a US domestic legal action is legitimate and reasonable.

3): So the fundamental purpose of the legal action is the national interests of US, even if Huawei's business is considered as a critical threaten to national security. It is unavoidable that there are conflicts each other between different countries such as China and US. Many of us has a opinion that Human Rights is superior to national sovereignty. If such a domestic legal action is viewed as part of national sovereignty, at least it shall respect Human Rights when applying LAJS.
  
4): The accusation against Ms Meng is not likely delivered to her before the Warrant is requested to Canadian legal organization. At least, Ms Meng is not aware of the accusation before her being arrested. Then before the judgement, it might take days, months, even years for legal process. It is obviously unfair to Ms Meng.

 5): Canadian's extradition to US for LAJS rationality shall be specifically considered and carefully reviewed. Unfortunately, I am not a legal professional and is not able to obtain historical case details and not so much public discussion going around main stream public media.

LAJS is a common practice in international affairs resolution, special interests preference is human weakness. Governments are very strong enforcement existence. So the application of LAJS shall be escalated to international community to prevent the chaos to lead to breaking of peace and harm to  human rights.

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