“[some] criminal statutes which are, as a class, not logically dependent on their locality for the Government’s jurisdiction, but are enacted because of the right of the Government to defend itself against obstruction, or fraud wherever perpetrated... Some such offenses can only be committed within the territorial jurisdiction of the Government because of the local acts required to constitute them.
Others are such that to limit their locus to the strictly territorial jurisdiction would be greatly to curtail the scope and usefulness of the statute and leave open a large immunity for frauds as easily committed by citizens on the high seas and in foreign countries as at home. In such cases, Congress has not thought it necessary to make specific provision in the law that the locus shall include the high seas and foreign countries, but allows it to be inferred from the nature of the offense” (Emphasis added - E.E.L.).
According to the Bowman ruling [77], we will revisit the following since acts of conspiracy to import dangerous drugs into the United States and distribute them there are clearly among the offenses of the type to which it refers (United States v. Perez-Herrera (1980) [78], at p. 290; United States v. Wright-Barker (1986) [79], at p. 167; United States v. Vasquez-Velasco (1994) [80], at p. 839).
Expanding Affiliations
- When a legal system chooses to apply itself beyond territory, the geographical element is omitted and a "gap" gaps are created between the system and the act to which it seeks to apply. There is a need to establish an alternative connection that has the power to reconnect the act to the legal system. "The attitude is selective, according to the offense's connection to the state, which comes in place of the territorial connection..." - Words of Prof. Feller (S.Z. Feller) Fundamentals of Penal Law (Vol. 1) (hereinafter - Feller Foundations of Penal Law [127]), p. 240). He also insisted on this Justice Barak:
"When the provision of a certain law extends the 'authority' of the law beyond the territory, the general territorial element disappears as the element that determines the scope of the local application of the criminal norm. This general territorial element is usually replaced by another normative requirement, which links the offense committed outside the territory of the state with the state... Under the general principle of territoriality, which serves as a substantive element of the offense, a new substantive element determines the boundaries of the extraterritorial application of the criminal norm" (Criminal Appeal 163/82 David v. State of Israel [29], at p.