When does US state law apply on the high seas? Closely related: What is the furthest point from land at sea where individual U.S. state laws apply? , but in reference to US territorial waters. It is pretty clear that at least some US federal laws applies to US-flagged ships on the high seas (not territorial waters) as part of the US's claimed Special maritime and territorial jurisdiction of the United States. This means that simply taking a boat a mile outside of the US's territorial waters does not fully relieve those aboard from Federal liability or jurisdiction. To what extent do US states have jurisdiction on acts committed on the high seas? States typically have extraterritoriality when the laws in question inherently allow for some extraterritorial effect (such as the famous &quot;Four Corners Murder&quot; scenario or general hypothetical standing-on-the-border-line shenanigans), or sometimes when they explicitly state so (a controversial area of law, getting new attention in the context of leaving a state to obtain an abortion). Are there other principles that determine when and if a particular state law is applicable on a US-flagged ship on the high seas? As a hypothetical, suppose I buy a used oil tanker, register it in the US, and set it up as a hydroponic farm on the high seas somewhere between Bermuda and the Azores. I grow crops that are legal Federally but banned under all, or essentially all, US states. Is there any precedent that would allow any of them to reach out and slap me with a state charge just for growing them at sea? If so, how is it determined which state(s) have jurisdiction? The state I am a legal resident of? The state I was last present in before leaving the territorial limits of the USA? Whatever state finds me first? Do all 50 of them get their own chance to apply their laws to whatever it is I am doing on the high seas? Another hypothetical could be practicing a state-licensed profession without a license. If the regulation of the profession is solely covered by state laws, is there any way that a state could &quot;get&quot; me if I limited my practice to the Special maritime and territorial jurisdiction of the United States, requiring my clients to come to me on the high seas for services that aren't currently regulated under Federal law? While the juiciest hypotheticals relate to criminal law, civil law could also be considered. For example, I am a resident of a state that has passed a statute allowing me to sue anyone who does the Hokey Pokey and turns themselves around. This is a novel cause of action and has neither precedent nor an equivalent in Federal law. I'm on a US-flagged cargo ship on the high seas when the captain does the Hokey Pokey and turns themselves around. Does the state have jurisdiction over the captain to subject him to the judgment of the state's court?
California courts have held that state's labor law applicable to mariners on a vessel based in California, and mostly working in local waters, even when the ship's voyage took it into federal or international waters - Gulf Offshore Logistics, LLC v. Superior Court of Ventura County, case no. B298318, 2020. Following a direction from the California Supreme Court, the California Court of Appeal decided that the state's wage and hour regulations apply to maritime workers on the same basis as is used for certain other highly mobile workers. That includes pilots and flight attendants, as in Ward v United Airlines (2020) 9 Cal.5th 732, which held: For interstate transportation workers and others who do not work more than half the time in any one state, we conclude this principle will be satisfied if the worker performs some work here and is based in California, meaning that California serves as the physical location where the worker presents himself or herself to begin work. The ship in the case was based in a port just west of Los Angeles. It travelled from there through California coastal waters, and into the Santa Barbara Channel. That is an anomalous area because California considers it to be part of the state as far as state law, but the federal government does not. The workers lived in various other states, and the company owning the vessel was based in Lousiana - therefore, they had moved for summary dismissal of the California case in favor of Lousiana law. The Court of Appeal said that in addition to the relevant federal labor law (the FLSA), California law would apply when the majority of work done was in California territorial waters. And: We note that [the ship] also sailed outside of California’s boundaries and into international waters. This circumstance does not alter our conclusion. The wage and hour regulations then apply, as with airline workers and truckers, to work done outside California, but by somebody whose work is based there (the ship's home port and the location of the majority of its voyage). That is in addition to federal law.
Short Answer At the level of generality presented in the question, it is impossible to know with any meaningful level of comfort, which state's laws regarding punitive damages caps will apply, even if there are prior precedents addressing a similar issue, since the determination is so dependent upon a rich set of relevant facts. Long Answer Does Federal Or State Law Apply? In a diversity case, under what is known as the Erie doctrine, after the U.S. Supreme Court case that established it, a federal district court sitting in diversity applies the substantive law of the state in which it is located (including its choice of law rules) and federal procedural law. A variety of subsequent cases have clarified (or at least made more specific) what counts as substantive law, and what counts as procedural law. A 2018 law review article (open access) uses a five page long flow chart to explain the rule. A simplified partial page flowchart regarding whether state or federal law applies can be found here. To cut a long analysis short, punitive damage limitations generally count as substantive law under this test. So, the question of which state's law to apply to punitive damages caps in a diversity case brought in a U.S. District Court in Texas is precisely the same as the question faces by a Texas state court regarding which state's law to apply. Choice Of Law Analysis At The State Level In general, a state court (or a federal court sitting in diversity) applies the law of the state in which it is located unless a party argues that under choice of law principles that another state's law should apply, and that party shows that the law of the state whose law is proposed is different from the law of the state where the case is being tried. Historically, there were rigid rules that provided that in particular kinds of cases, a particular state's law would apply. Some of those historical rules continue to have full force. For example, the substantive real property law of the state where real property is located almost always applies. But, in other cases, a more vague modern rule for choice of law applies. This is the rule that the law of the state with the most significant relationship to the issue to be decided should apply. Different issues in the same case may end up being governed by different laws as a result. Among the factors to be considered in applying a most significant relationship test are: The place where the event giving rise to the claim occurred. The interest of the state where the person who was harmed resides in controlling the amount of compensation that the person harmed received. The interest of the state where the person who caused the harm resides in encouraging or discouraging business activity that may hurt others. The interest of the state where the insurance company paying some or all of the claim is located in not driving up insurance premiums. The inquiry in this multi-factor balancing test is usually extremely fact intensive. The practical effect of the most significant relationship test has been to make the ultimate decision less predictable and to make it more likely that a judge will decide that the forum state's law will apply. Under the historical rule, about two-thirds of requests to apply a non-forum state's law were granted. Under the modern rule, about one-third of such requests are granted. A law review article from 1987 spells out the choice of law rules in Texas at the time which have probably become somewhat looser since that time that it was written. The article is James P. George, Choice of Law Outline for Texas Courts, 18 Tex. Tech L. Rev. 785 (1987). Available at: https://scholarship.law.tamu.edu/facscholar/255 A short article looking at the case law for choice of law cases with regard to punitive damages can be found here. It opens by observing that: The United States Supreme Court has repeatedly acknowledged that while states are afforded discretion over the imposition of punitive damages, state law is still subject to &quot;procedural and substantive constitutional limitations on these awards.&quot; State Farm Mut. Auto. Ins. Co. v. Campbell, 538 U.S. 408, 416 (2003). Relying on the Due Process Clause, the Court has provided some basis for determining which state's law applies to the punitive damages question and what conduct is subject to punitive liability. In Phillips Petroleum Co. v. Shutts, for example, the Supreme Court held that &quot;for a State's substantive law to be selected in a constitutionally permissible manner, that State must have a significant contact or significant aggregation of contacts, creating state interests, such that choice of its law is neither arbitrary nor fundamentally unfair.&quot; Phillips Petroleum Co. v. Shutts, 472 U.S. 797, 818 (1985) (internal quotation marks and citation omitted). The Court has also made clear that &quot;[e]lementary notions of fairness&quot; require that a defendant must be given &quot;fair notice&quot; of what conduct is subject to punitive damages, as well as the severity of the penalty that may be imposed. BMW of N. Am. v. Gore, 517 U.S. 559, 574 (1996). It also observes in an analysis that should be taken with a grain of salt, because it comes from a law firm that defends companies that are usually defendants in product liability cases rather than plaintiffs and is not written by a neutral party: a growing number of courts have begun to recognize that an analysis of the Restatement factors points to the application of defendants' home jurisdictions' laws to the issue of punitive damages. See, e.g., Kirchman v. Novartis Pharm. Corp., No. 8:06- cv-1787-T-24-TBM, 2014 WL 2722483, at *4 (M.D. Fla. June 16, 2014) (applying the law of New Jersey to punitive damages claim because that state &quot;is the place of injury-causing conduct,&quot; i.e., the state &quot;where Novartis made its corporate decisions regarding the labeling, packaging and warning of the drugs, which Plaintiff alleges caused Mr. Kirchman's osteonecrosis of the jaw&quot;) (citation omitted); Williams v. Novartis Pharm. Corp., 15 F. Supp. 3d 761, 768 (S.D. Ohio 2014) (&quot;When a plaintiff seeks punitive damages against a manufacturer in a products liability case based on a 'failure to warn' theory, the focus, for purposes of a choice-of-law analysis, needs to be on the place where the defendant's alleged corporate misconduct occurred.&quot;); Braun, 2014 WL 345246, at *5 (California law applied to punitive damages claims against infant sling manufacturer because defendant &quot;designed its products in California&quot; and therefore &quot;all of the actions that would form the basis for punitive damages occurred there&quot;); Dopson-Troutt v. Novartis Pharm. Corp., No. 8:06-CV-1708-T-24-EAJ, 2013 WL 3808205, at *4 (M.D. Fla. July 22, 2013) (&quot;The Court agrees with the reasoning of the other courts who have found that&quot; the Restatement principles &quot;support applying New Jersey law to the punitive damages issue in this case&quot; because &quot;the basic policy underlying punitive damages is to punish and deter [the defendant], whose conduct occurred in New Jersey . . . .&quot;) (internal quotation marks and citation omitted). For example, in Irby, a Virginia plaintiff alleged that he developed osteonecrosis of the jaw after ingesting the drug Zometa, manufactured by Novartis. Irby, 2011 WL 5835414, at 2. The parties stipulated that Virginia law governed the plaintiff's compensatory claims for failure to warn, defective design, breach of implied warranty, negligence, and consumer fraud. They disagreed, however, on which state's law should govern plaintiff's punitive damages claim. Virginia law caps punitive damages at $350,000, while New Jersey law bars them completely in cases involving FDA-approved drugs. Plaintiff argued Virginia law should apply as the place of injury, while Novartis argued that the law of New Jersey should apply because its principal place of business is located in that state. To some extent, these choice of law principles apply even in cases where there are arguably procedural rules that apply, rather than merely blindly following a federal procedure and state substantive distinction. Wikipedia's entry on the Erie doctrine concludes in part by stating: Erie has gone in a newer and even more complicated direction than the previous controlling cases, and that instead of selecting either federal or state law for a case, the federal court may be required to somehow blend federal and state law, depending on the issue. This is quite frustrating for those who wish to have a black-letter rule that will point them to the answer. However, the possibility of blending in Erie does not open up an infinitude of possibilities. But even in the context here where it is clear that state law rather than federal law applies, the determination of which state's law applies is itself involved and is frustratingly indeterminate.
Why would the EU expect that any of its laws would apply to my business? It doesn't. Unless you choose to do business in the EU (which is possible, thanks to the wonders of the World Wide Web). Then, and only then, do you have to comply with EU law, including the GDPR. From a comment by @BenCollins: I'm talking about non-EU online retail that does allow Europeans (particularly those not actually in the EU at the time of the transaction) to place orders. Basically, GDPR Article 3 says that the GDPR applies to the processing of personal data of data subjects who are in the Union The phrase &quot;in the union&quot; is clearly open to interpretation, but according to the website Security Now, Dr. Michèle Finck says this: Most people seem to agree that the relevant criterion is whether you're based in the EU at the moment data is collected - citizen or not (my emphasis). While Michèle Finck is a well-respected legal scholar, she is not an authoritative legal source, so we need to wait for to case-law to nail this. For what it is worth, (not much I am afraid) I think it would be against common sense to define the territorial scope so broad that brick and mortar stores in the USA risks to be prosecuted in Europe if they sold goods or services to European tourists. However, what most US based businesses that chooses to be open to business for orders that are placed by natural persons who are in the [European] Union need to know that there is this: According to European law, the GDRP does apply to them when they conduct such business. From a comment by @BenCollins: I question the notions that (a) there is a basis by which the law would apply The legal basis is European law, in particular GDPR Article 3. and (b) that it has any enforcement mechanisms outside the EU. As for enforcement, I think a good answer has already been provided by Dale M. but for completeness: The USA has treaties with EU that mean that after a legal case has been decided in a court of law in the EU, it can request that the USA enforce the judgement (typically by collecting the fine the USA-based business incurred when conducting business in Europe). To make this answer more general, here are a breakdown of the the regulation of territorial scope of the GDPR for businesses that are not located in the EU: The scope is clearly spelled out in Article 3, and if you're not &quot;a controller or a processor in the Union&quot;, you are only subject to the GDPR if your processing activities are related to: a) the offering of goods or services, irrespective of whether a payment of the data subject is required, to such data subjects in the Union; or b) the monitoring of their behaviour as far as their behaviour takes place within the Union. US based companies that engage in business practices that are illegal in Europe know about this, and has already taking steps to protect themselves from the being prosecuted in Europe under the GDPR by using firewalls to block access to their services from the EU. The bottom line is that if you: have no presence in Europe, and don't offer goods or services to people who are in the Union, and you don't collect personal data about European natural persons, then the GDPR does not apply to you. If at least one of the above applies then you need to follow the GDPR if you do not want to be prosecuted in the EU.
Since no jurisdiction is specified, I decided to search in maryland in the united-states As far as I can tell, there is no state or federal law which prohibits a private individual from owning a decommissioned military tank. Most public highways and roads have weight limits, and many tanks would exceed them. Most tanks, or at least most older tanks, are not in any case &quot;street legal&quot; not having required headlights, brake lights, air bags, and other safety devices. Treads must be modified to avoid road damage. None of this would be relevant if the tank was kept on private land and not used on public roads or streets. If somehow the main gun or a mounted machine gun were still in place, and not disabled, permits would be required that are almost impossible to obtain. Specifically: &quot;State Laws and Published Ordinances – Maryland Statutes current through chapter 18 of the 2020 session lists Code section 4-401 which provides that: (c) Machine gun. &quot;Machine gun&quot; means a loaded or unloaded weapon that is capable of automatically discharging more than one shot or bullet from a magazine by a single function of the firing device. Section 4-402: (a) Evidence of possession. The presence of a machine gun in a room, boat, or vehicle is evidence of the possession or use of the machine gun by each person occupying the room, boat, or vehicle. ... (c) Registration of possession. (1) A person who acquires a machine gun shall register the machine gun with the Secretary of State Police: (i) within 24 hours after acquiring the machine gun; and (ii) in each succeeding year during the month of May. Section 4-501 (b) Destructive device. (1) &quot;Destructive device&quot; means explosive material, incendiary material, or toxic material that is: (i) combined with a delivery or detonating apparatus so as to be capable of inflicting injury to persons or damage to property; or (ii) deliberately modified, containerized, or otherwise equipped with a special delivery, activation, or detonation component that gives the material destructive characteristics of a military ordnance. (2) &quot;Destructive device&quot; includes a bomb, grenade, mine, shell, missile, flamethrower, poison gas, Molotov cocktail, pipe bomb, and petroleum-soaked ammonium nitrate Section 4-503 (a) Prohibited. A person may not knowingly: (1) manufacture, transport, possess, control, store, sell, distribute, or use a destructive device; or (2) possess explosive material, incendiary material, or toxic material with intent to create a destructive device.
There are a number of specific limitation on what can be made criminal in US law, derived from constitutional protection. Specific Rights Expressions of free speech, for example, cannot be made criminal, although there can be laws which regulate or impact speech to a degree. Similarly, the establishment clause of the First Amendment prohibits a law requiring people to attend a particular church, and he free Exercise clause prohibits any criminal penalties for any religious practice or lack of practice. Most of the other provisions of the Bill of right would impose similar limitations. The legislature cannot criminalize what people have a constitutional right to do. Thre are also specific limitations not in the bill of rights, such as the prohibition of Ex Post Facto laws, the right to trial by jury, and the constitutional limitation of Treason laws. Rational Basis Beyond that the Due Process clause of the 5th and the parallel clause of the 14th impose limits on criminal law generally. Criminal laws must have (at least) a rational basis. The legislature cannot just prohibit picking up papers because they felt like it, they must have articulated a problem and a plausible reason why a given law would address it. If they don't the law may be overturned as unconstitutional. If a law is challenged as being unconstitutional, it will currently either be subject to rational basis analysis, or to one of the stricter levels. However a law which cannot pass rational basis analysis will not survive intermediate scrutiny or strict scrutiny either. Laws which appear to invade one of the enumerated rights, or a right that the Court has deemed &quot;fundamental&quot; are normally tested under either strict or intermediate scrutiny. According to the the Wikipedia article: Courts applying rational basis review seek to determine whether a law is &quot;rationally related&quot; to a &quot;legitimate&quot; government interest, whether real or hypothetical. The higher levels of scrutiny are intermediate scrutiny and strict scrutiny. ... laws implicating unenumerated rights that the Supreme Court has not recognized as fundamental receive rational basis review. ... In modern constitutional law, the rational basis test is applied to constitutional challenges of both federal law and state law (via the Fourteenth Amendment). This test also applies to both legislative and executive action whether those actions be of a substantive or procedural nature. The rational basis test prohibits the government from imposing restrictions on liberty that are irrational or arbitrary, or drawing distinctions between persons in a manner that serves no constitutionally legitimate end. ... A court applying rational basis review will virtually always uphold a challenged law unless every conceivable justification for it is a grossly illogical non sequitur. (See Killian, Johnny H., George A. Costello, &amp; Kenneth R. Thomas, co-eds., The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation: Analysis of Cases Decided by the Supreme Court of the United States to June 28, 2002, by Congressional Research Service, Library of Congress (Senate Document No. 108-17, 108th Congress, 2d Session) and specifically Romer v. Evans, 517 U.S. 620 (1996) at 635) Rational Basis analysis became accepted after the demise of &quot;substantive Due Process&quot;, mostly in a civil, rather than criminal context. A version of it was suggested in Lochner v. New York 198 U.S. 45 (1905), in the dissent by Justice Holmes. It was adopted as governing in [*Nebbia v. New York * In United States Department of Agriculture v. Moreno 413 U.S. 528 (1973) The Court overturned, on a rational basis scrutiny, a law excluding households consisting of unrelated people from the Federal Food Stamp program, writing: [A] bare congressional desire to harm a politically unpopular group cannot constitute a legitimate governmental interest. Specific cases In Eisenstadt v. Baird 405 U.S. 438 (1972) a law that criminalized the distribution of contraceptives to unmarried persons was overturned on a rational basis review. Similar cases are now generally treated with intermediate scrutiny. In James v. Strange 407 U.S. 128 (1972). a Kansas law reclaiming payments for public defenders was overturens on rational basis review as “an impermissible burden on the right to counsel established in Gideon v. Wainwright.&quot; In Bowers v. Hardwick 478 U.S. 186 (1986), rational basis analysis was employed to sustain a statute criminalizing homosexual activity. However, this was later overturned.. Vagueness Also under Due Process, vague laws are prohibited. If a reasonable person cannot tell from the law what is or is not illegal, the law can be overturned for vagueness. Procedural protections Then there are procedural limits, also largely derived from the Due Process clause(s). A law cannot automatically convict people without a genuine hearing, in which a person can present a defense to an independent, impartial judge or jury. A law cannot impose duties which are flatly impossible to perform. A law cannot impose punishments which are considered unreasonable for the seriousness of the crime (as evaluated by judges). Other Limits There are other limits as well, it would take a book to list them all in detail. But those are some of the more frequently applied ones.
The question is oddly phrased: The law does not give allowances for its violation. Many laws have exceptions. E.g., the law against killing endangered animals contains an exception for defensive killings. Perhaps you are thinking of safe harbors? For example, there are general provisions in the law like "exigent circumstances" that allow police to proceed with actions that, absent those provisions, would constitute violations of law. "Permission" to violate a right can be granted explicitly in the form of a warrant, which allows law enforcement to "violate" specific property and freedom rights. Finally, one might consider an executive pardon or jury-nullification to be ex post "permission to break the law."
You may want to select a state where you have some sort of presence. According to this article, personal jurisdiction can be waived, but subject matter jurisdiction can not, and "for pragmatic reasons some states deny subject-matter jurisdiction to specific claims, such as those arising in other states". In other words, if nothing about you, the other party, or the case has any relation to the state, the court doesn't necessarily have to listen to the case. And if that happens, the provision about them submitting to the jurisdiction is worthless. Beyond that, are you OK with going to court in the location you select? Do you know whether all your terms and conditions are valid in that location? Do you know whether one place or another has more favorable interpretations of the laws, or more favorable local rules, when it comes to the types of disputes you are likely to have? You probably want a lawyer to help you decide.
It depends Law in international airspace over international waters is the law of the country the plane is registered in - just like a ship is considered land of the registered/owner's country while in international waters. This is, according to the Britannica, also called the quasi-territorial Jurisdiction. So if this were a Lufthansa Flight, technically everything there happens in Germany under the Tokyo Convention and German Law (StGB §4) and the case can be held in Germany. For United Airlines it means, that the act happened in the US and if it was an Air Japan flight, it would be Japan, no matter in which airspace it happens. However, other laws might also make the law of other countries apply and put the people into the jurisdiction by virtue of law applying globally: if the perpetrator or victim were US citizens, any felony that happens between the two on that flight can also be prosecuted in the US, as they claim jurisdiction in those cases. Similarly, the UK and Germany have similar laws, in the latter case for only a subset of crimes (StGB §5, 6-11a). This is the principle of personal jurisdiction. But technically, the quasi-territorial jurisdiction can override that. And that again is overridden once the plane lands and enters the territorial jurisdiction of the harboring country. All involved countries can elect to prosecute or not, and there is no double jeopardy problem as we have separate sovereigns. Who is most likely to prosecute? Depends on the case, but in the least, the country of registration has Jurisdiction and will usually get the first crack at the case. However, extradition treaties and other treaties between two countries can give preference to the country of the nationals. BTW: we had pretty much the same question for murder on a plane.