S.H.I.E.L.D. is one of the most significant entities in the Marvel Universe. First introduced in Strange Tales #135 in August 1965, the organization, usually led by Nick Fury, is sometimes presented as a branch of the US military and others as an arm of the UN. Either way, the organization routinely engages in missions both on and off US soil, and is a good reminder of the implications of international law on comic book stories. In this chapter, we’ll start by looking at some of the more unusual countries in comic book worlds, the treatment of foreign dignitaries and diplomatic missions, then at the status of organizations like S.H.I.E.L.D.
The important thing to remember about international law, particularly in the context of the law of nations, 1 is that international law is a matter of custom and practice as much as it is anything else. This is true of domestic law as well, and is really the reason the common law exists: a “law” is, essentially, a custom or tradition that is enforced by a government. In the case of common law that tradition is built up by the decisions of courts. But while governments have pretty effective tools for coercing their citizens to obey the laws, coercing other governments to play ball is a lot harder. A whole lot depends on various countries, more or less voluntarily, abiding by treaties and generally accepted standards. Reneging on a treaty can lead to war or economic sanctions, but short of that, the most significant consequence is that the breaching nation takes a hit to its reputation. If country A breaks its treaty with country B, every country is going to wonder whether this means that country A is going to ignore other treaty obligations.
In addition, international law is significantly a sort of collaborative dance between the countries of the world. Countries violate certain aspects of international law all the time, but for various reasons are permitted to get away with it. For example, Chinese companies often infringe the intellectual property rights of foreign companies, and they are generally permitted to do this without consequence, because everyone wants access to Chinese manufactured goods. Similarly, the US has engaged in all sorts of questionable military operations since World War II, but the combination of being the world’s largest economy and having an overwhelmingly powerful military has led to very few reprisals there. On the other hand there are rogue states like Iran, which routinely flouts the international community simply because, unless the rest of the world decided to invade, there is precious little that can be done about it. All diplomatic options have essentially been exhausted, and there aren’t really any further trade sanctions available once an embargo has been imposed.
So as we consider the “legality” of various international law situations, it is important to remember that the question of practicality is at least as important as the technical legality of a given situation. If a particular situation is legal, but the international community would never permit it, that’s a problem. On the other hand, some stories have events and actions which are blatantly illegal, but which the international community would probably either ignore or even approve.
Comic book stories frequently make up fictional countries as locations for our heroes to do their heroing overseas without referencing any place that could embarrass any potential readers or require the writers to do actual research. Many of these are sort of one-off countries that are never mentioned again, but some wind up becoming part of the canon. Some of these are pretty unremarkable, legally speaking. Latveria, ruled by Dr. Doom, is a fictional nation in the Marvel Universe carved out of Romania, Hungary, and Serbia. During Dr. Doom’s rule it was a dictatorship or absolute monarchy, a form of government, which while increasingly unfashionable today, does still exist. Latveria, for all intents and purposes, is just another small nation unfriendly to US interests. It stands with half a dozen or so other nations in that respect, including some of the former Soviet republics, depending on how the winds are blowing. But Latveria is presumably officially recognized by the United States and other modern governments, and given its inclusion in the Marvel graphic novel 1602, it’s been around as an otherwise normal sovereign state for at least four centuries. So far, there isn’t much to say here. Latveria does not present any legal issues the State Department doesn’t already handle every day. The whole mad-dictator-using-supernatural-powers thing is a bit unusual, but it isn’t a strictly legal problem. This also probably goes for the dozen or so fictional African nations in various Marvel continuities: they may as well be a real country for all the difference it makes.
But what about Wakanda, the fictional, technologically advanced African nation ruled by T’Challa, aka the Black Panther? Wakanda is also called “The Hidden Land,” and it is largely closed off from the rest of the world. The fact that the country has existed for thousands of years without regular contact with the outside world is problematic because recognition is a big part of what makes a state sovereign.
If Wakanda exists inside the putative borders of at least one other country, then there is a potential for conflict with those nations, possibly even war, if Wakanda’s existence becomes known to the wider world. Not that the other countries are likely to be able to win that war, but states don’t readily let go of territory where possible, and antagonistic neighbors are inconvenient even if they aren’t a military threat. Even the weakest of countries can make things diplomatically and logistically difficult for their neighbors. 2
Alternatively, Wakanda might exist outside the borders of other countries, though that supposes some extraordinary method of concealment to avoid the hole–in-the-map problem. That’s especially hard in the era of satellite mapping. But if Wakanda reveals itself under those circumstances, then unless some powerful countries promptly recognize Wakanda’s sovereignty, there might be a land grab by neighboring countries fighting over the new territory and its rich natural resources (e.g., vibranium, the nigh-indestructible material of which Captain America’s shield is made).
Things are different still with underwater nations. Aquaman and Namor occupy their respective universes’ versions of Atlantis, which somehow survived its submersion thousands of years ago. In addition to the problems facing hidden states in general, these pose the additional problems of not actually being on dry land. International waters are a rather fraught issue in international diplomacy, as they represent among other things access to the world’s shipping lanes, an invaluable economic and military resource. “Territorial waters,” i.e., waters where states exert the full force of their sovereignty, are pretty universally recognized to extend twelve miles from the low-tide mark, though some countries claim more than that. 3 “Contiguous zones,” where states may exert some limited authority mostly related to border protection and customs activities, extend twelve miles beyond territorial waters. The “exclusive economic zone” goes all the way out to two hundred miles from shore, and in that range a state may exert exclusive control over economic activities like drilling, fishing, etc., but it may not prohibit or interfere with transit or just hanging around.
But all of these definitions are based on the low-tide mark. What are the territorial waters of Atlantis, which has no low-tide mark because it is completely underwater? Even if one were to simply grant the same sorts of rights as land-based nations, where do the borders of Atlantis start and stop? The edge of the city? Some distance beyond? There isn’t exactly a natural feature—on the surface anyway—where one could draw an obvious line, nor are there going to be other countries with which to define a border. Even if a ship was trying to respect the borders, without GPS or a really good navigator, it would be almost impossible to tell when you were trespassing.
It’s possible that other nations might not recognize that Atlantis has territorial waters at all, as it would be pretty inconvenient to do so. States are accustomed to having pretty much free rein in the Atlantic, so a huge hole in the map defined solely by law created to respect Atlantean territorial claims might not be of much interest to other states. One could always make the argument that Atlantis is free to do whatever it likes on the ocean floor provided it does not interfere with surface traffic, but even then (1) why would Atlantis agree to that, and (2) what about submarine traffic? And given that Atlantis would probably need to be willing to go to war to get what it wants, would it? Could it? Namor has certainly launched an attack on more than one occasion, 4 but that never seems to go very well. It would probably be best for all involved if the undersea kingdoms kept to themselves and did not advance any territorial claims to the ocean itself. International disputes like this one have historically been solved with armies. Or, navies, as the case may be.
So we’ve got some basic grasp about what to do about the various terrestrial fictional countries. But what about the Inhumans, the villains first introduced in the Fantastic Four? 5 Attilan, their city, really gets around, having been found in the North Atlantic, the Andes, the Himalayas, and…the Moon. To what extent do Earth’s laws reach the Moon? Or just places outside the Earth’s atmosphere in general?
Earthbound legal systems don’t normally extend beyond the Earth’s atmosphere. 6 Indeed, individual nations’ legal systems don’t extend much beyond their borders, but we’ve already got a terrestrial example: the high seas.
The Blue Area of the Moon, secret home of the Inhumans. Brian Michael Bendis et al., New Avengers: Disassembled (Part 4), in NEW AVENGERS (VOL. 1) 24 (Marvel Comics November 2006).
Oceans outside the territorial claims of any particular country are all but lawless. The UN Convention on the Law of the Sea has been ratified or at least signed by almost every country, but apart from addressing piracy it is mostly concerned with mundane issues like establishing territorial boundaries and exclusive economic zones. Admiralty law is a little more detailed (and one of the oldest continuously operating bodies of law in the world) but even that has mostly to do with the conduct of vessels and salvage rights.
But even there, national courts are widely held to be able to exert jurisdiction over persons for actions they commit while at sea once the person is brought to shore. One of the most famous cases in every law student’s criminal law class is R. v. Dudley & Stephens, 7 about some shipwrecked sailors who cannibalize the cabin boy. The defendants were brought to trial and convicted once they returned to their native country, and jurisdiction was not one of the real issues. But if they had been rescued by, say, an American ship, it’s possible they could have been brought to trial in an American court. Crimes committed on the high seas can generally be tried everywhere, e.g., Somalian pirates being tried in New York City. The theory is that crimes committed outside national boundaries are, in a sense, crimes against civilization, and thus may be tried anywhere. 8
There is a limit here: the acts in question need to be obviously criminal by anyone’s standards. Murder is a pretty easy example. So is piracy. But what about things that are only illegal by statute, like gambling? A ferry that runs between Maine and Nova Scotia passes through international waters, and the on-board casino is only open when outside both the US’s and Canada’s territorial waters. There really hasn’t been all that much law here, but it’s unlikely that any given nation would be able to enforce its particular regulatory regime on the high seas over anything but a ship registered under that nation’s flag.
Outer space is quite similar. There is, in fact, a statute 9 that extends federal jurisdiction to spacecraft flying the US flag and that also discusses maritime jurisdiction with similar results. State laws do not apply, but federal laws do. But again, note that enforcement would require bringing a defendant back to US soil for trial, just as it would for crime on the high seas.
The same statute, specifically subsection 7, also grants US jurisdiction over “any place outside the jurisdiction of any nation with respect to an offense by or against a national of the United States.” This is kind of a catchall clause. If no one else has jurisdiction and a US national is either the defendant or the victim, then the US has jurisdiction. So if a supervillain commits a federal crime against an American superhero on, say, Mars, then assuming the supervillain can be brought back to Earth, he can be charged in federal court.
Turning back to the Inhumans specifically, Attilan would probably be treated mostly like a foreign country, despite its extraplanetary location. The Inhumans certainly seem to talk as if they should be treated as a foreign country. Black Bolt, the king of the Inhumans, has imposed what amounts to a universal ban on Earthlings hanging around the Moon, which seems to amount to a territorial claim. While the US might not be all that happy about this—the whole Moon? Really?—there doesn’t seem to be all that much that anyone can do about it, nor ultimately all that much incentive to either. The Inhumans don’t exactly have representation at the UN or any other international bodies, don’t seem to spend all that much time on Earth, and the US doesn’t have any ongoing presence on the Moon, even in Earth-616. So really, Inhuman/US relations seem analogous to any other nation with which the US does not have formal relations. The fact that it takes a spacecraft to get there doesn’t change things too much.
Let’s lower our sights now and consider the legal implications of comic book characters that have some kind of formal status with a foreign government. As part of Marvel’s 2006 Civil War event, the Black Panther, as King T’Challa of Wakanda, marries Ororo Munroe (Storm of the X-Men), in what is described as the wedding of the decade. Which is sweet and all, but winds up having some pretty weird international law implications as the story unfolds. The Civil War story touches pretty heavily on the issue of diplomatic missions and the effect of US laws on foreign citizens.
As in the real world, the United States in Earth-616 is watched fairly closely by other countries as something of a weather vane for world events. So when the federal government passed the Superhuman Registration Act (SHRA), all eyes were keenly fixed on the US to see how that was going to play out, not only in the superhuman community, but by foreign governments. Things get really interesting where the two overlap, such as with Dr. Doom and T’Challa.
The writers seem to recognize the fact that the SHRA’s effect outside of the US is pretty limited. When Ben Grimm realizes that he can’t support either side of the conflict in good conscience, he relocates to Paris under the correct assumption that it will be difficult for federal agents to make him do much of anything if he’s in France. A number of other characters discuss fleeing to Canada. But it should be noted that Grimm did register with the government before he moved, whereas a superhuman who did not could theoretically be in violation of the SHRA in the same way that a draft dodger might escape punishment but still be in violation of the law. So Grimm’s registration and subsequent self-imposed exile does not necessarily violate the law (unless participation in The Initiative is mandatory, which some stories suggest may be the case).
Beyond that, the writers raise the question of whether a superhuman temporary visitor (who wasn’t a head of state or otherwise qualified to diplomatic immunity) would be required to register. This is never resolved in the comics, but it would stand to reason that this would work in much the same way as similar laws interact with immigration status. In general, when the government requires people to register for something, be it for Selective Service or whatever, that duty only attaches when permanent residence (or employment of some kind) is established. So a vacationer or exchange student or a visiting Canadian superhero team like Alpha Flight would probably not be required to register, but someone seeking refugee status, permanent residency (a “green card”) or citizenship (naturalization) would. Requiring temporary visitors to register would not only be an absolute hassle, but would probably piss off other nations by imposing arguably unnecessary and burdensome obligations on their citizens. Even given the anti-super fervor that swept the country, one can imagine Congress taking a measured approach here. You don’t want Alpha Flight’s Sasquatch taking his grievances to Capitol Hill.
Finally, there is also the issue, as mentioned, that certain characters are both superhuman and highly placed in foreign governments. Victor von Doom is the head of state of Latveria. T’Challa is the king of Wakanda. There’s also the Atlanteans, who in at least one case are diplomatic envoys (though their spies probably don’t count, as spies can be detained). All of these will be entitled to diplomatic immunity, and attempting to abrogate that—as War Machine does in Civil War—would constitute an act of war, which should probably have caused a far bigger international incident than it seems to have. Even more, a foreign head of state actively taking sides with an insurrection, as T’Challa does with the Anti-Registration forces, is just completely out of bounds. This would be on the same level as France assisting the American colonies during the American Revolution, 10 or Britain coming in on the side of the Confederacy in the American Civil War, 11 i.e., it would immediately lead to a state of warfare between the US and the offending foreign power. The fact that T’Challa is a former Avenger is given far more weight to the resolution of this situation than seems appropriate, and why the US and Wakanda aren’t completely at each other’s throats is never adequately explored.
Then we come to Storm, aka Ororo Munroe, aka T’Challa’s wife and the reigning Queen of Wakanda, who happens to be a US citizen—in theory, anyway. It seems unlikely that she would be permitted to retain her citizenship after taking up her office in the Wakandan government, even though her official status is never worked out in any great detail. But as the Wakandan monarchy appears hereditary, it would seem that marrying T’Challa would invest her with at least some official political authority. So when federal troops attempt to arrest her when she returns to the US as part of their honeymoon political tour…it’s not entirely clear that (1) she is still subject to the SHRA given her questionable citizenship, or (2) why her status in the Wakandan government does not grant her diplomatic immunity. T’Challa certainly seems to take a dim view of the attempt.
Why the US should care about this is significantly less a question of law than Realpolitik. If the US is seen to be flouting international law by attempting to arrest foreign dignitaries, the State Department is going to have one hell of a time trying to explain to other countries why the government decided that any domestic political issue trumped long-established international law, and why it isn’t going to happen again.
The climactic battle of the Civil War event takes place in New York City, and in the carnage, the Wakandan embassy is essentially leveled, to the point that Black Panther and Storm need to find another place to stay in the US. Embassies are generally subject to a limited form of extraterritoriality under the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, of which the US is a member. Essentially, while still technically the sovereign territory of the host nation, embassies remain under the jurisdiction of the represented nation, and the host nation may not enter without permission. This is why so many intelligence operations are centered around embassies: The host nation cannot come and go as it pleases.
So if simply setting foot in an embassy without permission is a big deal—and it is—how much more is completely leveling one? Wakanda seems to basically shrug this off, and T’Challa decides not to make a big deal out of it. But this is far from the end of the matter. It’s actually quite remarkable that no other countries said anything about the incident. We’re talking about the destruction of a foreign embassy on US soil, which the government does not seem to have been able to prevent. That’s not going to give the international community warm and fuzzy feelings, and it’s entirely possible that other governments could use this incident as a pretense to beef up security at their own embassies in the US without the State Department being able to object as much as they otherwise might.
And they would certainly want to object. Embassies, being essentially enclaves of sovereign power on foreign soil, are incredible assets in intelligence gathering and espionage. This is one of those areas in which official practice and actual practice differ pretty significantly. Officially, it is against international law to use embassies for espionage or intelligence purposes. Unofficially, every country in the world does this. Everybody knows this, but the countries of the world have collectively decided, without officially saying so, that the risk posed by other countries engaging in espionage via their embassies is at least balanced out by the value of being able to do that right back. But part of this game is that the intelligence gathering activities need to be discreet. The gentlemen’s agreement is basically “Look, we all know we’re doing this, but we can’t turn a blind eye if you make too much noise, so keep it on the down low.”
So when the US “permits” the destruction of a foreign embassy on its soil, other countries would be able to put additional assets in play, bolstering their own security—and intelligence!—activities, and the US would lack any plausible way of objecting. As such, the US government would probably have wanted to take additional steps towards preventing the destruction of the embassy and certainly would have thrown the book at anyone involved in its destruction.
Lastly, comic books frequently include organizations that operate across national borders. We’re going to focus on S.H.I.E.L.D. here, as it’s the most prominent, superhero-related international organization out there that has some kind of official government status. 12 The exact nature of the organization is somewhat in doubt, as various writers have inconsistently depicted it as being either a US or a UN entity, but the current consensus appears to be that it is an agency of the latter. 13 Actually, the confusion is somewhat justified by the nature of international organizations in the real world. For example, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, while technically international organizations, are widely perceived to be subservient to American and European interests, as both organizations are headquartered in Washington, DC, and no non-American, non-European has ever been the head of either agency. So the fact that the head of S.H.I.E.L.D. has always been an American would tend to blur this line somewhat. 14
But assuming that S.H.I.E.L.D. is a truly international organization under the UN, this poses some interesting problems, because the UN does not actually possess any jurisdiction of its own. Rather than existing on its own or as the expression of the political will of its citizenry, the UN exists at the behest and pleasure of its member states and cannot take any action without their authorization. The UN does not have an army of its own and is not capable of raising one. UN peacekeepers are, in fact, soldiers on loan from member nations. They operate under the flag of the UN but remain part of their own nation’s chain of command. The ability of UN peacekeepers to act on their own initiative, outside the generally narrow rules of engagement with which they are authorized, is severely limited. For example, UNAMIR, the peacekeeping force in Rwanda, largely stood aside during the Rwandan genocide of 1994. The force is thought to have been capable of putting a stop to the violence, but it lacked the legal authority to do so, leading to the deaths of an estimated 850,000 people.
What, then, are we to make of S.H.I.E.L.D.? The basic idea is that the organization was chartered to deal with the threat posed by either the terrorist group HYDRA or superhuman/supernatural threats more generally. This is plausible enough, except for the fact that the UN really hasn’t proved all that effective a means for dealing with purely human threats. The Korean War is the last and only time when the UN has unambiguously authorized full-scale military action of any sort, and that only because the USSR stormed out in protest (which, in retrospect, was a really silly mistake that they never repeated). The current “wars” in which the US is engaged are not precisely authorized by the UN, despite a more or less broad spectrum of support from a variety of US allies. The idea that a technologically advanced, militarily powerful, standing international strike force could be authorized by the UN beggars belief. Such an agency could, in fact, exist, but every single deployment would require the authorization of the member states, so the potential scope of authority in each engagement is likely to be very limited.
No, S.H.I.E.L.D. seems to represent what the UN might or even arguably should be, but it doesn’t really represent the way the UN actually is today.
But what about the possibility that S.H.I.E.L.D. is actually just a top-secret US military force? That clears up a lot of problems, like the question of why it can exist in the first place, and it doesn’t necessarily introduce any new problems that aren’t already in play in the real world. A top-secret military agency running missions of high-level importance that never make it to the public eye and to which other governments don’t object? There are, what, half a dozen of those? More? We don’t even know. Sometimes other governments don’t object because the State Department throws its weight around. Sometimes it’s because they’ve formally or informally invited the US in to do the job. Other times they don’t even know about it. Is any of this legal? Not technically. Running military operations inside the borders of another country is generally considered to be casus belli. 15
But if one side decides not to make an issue out of it, which as discussed they might not for a variety of reasons, that’s more or less the end of it. There isn’t really anything like an international court to which nations can bring their disputes (outside of narrow areas like trade disputes brought before the WTO). No one and nothing has jurisdiction over sovereign states as such, and forcing a national government to do something involves either diplomacy or war. If one of the nations is positioned like the US, which, for good or ill, holds most of the cards in many situations, there isn’t much the other state can do about actions they don’t like other than complain: good economic relations with the US are too important, and few countries could even begin to mount a military response. Now that wouldn’t be true for countries like China, Russia, or even some of our more prominent allies like the UK. But pretty much anywhere in South America or Africa and a good chunk of Asia is more or less fair game, as evidenced by the fact that the US has conducted military operations throughout those regions with relative impunity for most of the past sixty years.
So positing a S.H.I.E.L.D., which is really just a branch of the Pentagon responsible for intervening in supernatural/paranormal situations all over the world, would involve the US violating international law in quite significant ways. But the US does this kind of thing all the time. So while it isn’t the optimal way of setting up something like S.H.I.E.L.D., it’s certainly a plausible one.
Extradition is an area of law that comes up surprisingly infrequently in comics, given that supervillains often commit crimes all across the world before retreating to a base of operations in another country. In fact, one of the best examples of comic book extradition comes not from the trial of a supervillain but rather the trial of a superhero: Bucky Barnes, sidekick (and sometimes replacement) for Captain America.
Barnes was put on trial in the United States after it was revealed that he had been brainwashed by the Soviets and employed as an assassin, a job that included killing Americans. Although Barnes had a solid defense, he ultimately changed his plea to guilty, but the judge sentenced him to time served. Any relief is short-lived, however, as the Russian ambassador to the United States announces that he has extradition orders to bring Bucky to Russia, where he has already been convicted in absentia of crimes against the state. And sure enough, he is hauled away to Russian prison, although he later escapes.
Russia is not at the top of the list of places to which it’s fun to be extradited. Ed Brubaker et al., The Trial of Captain America, Part 5, in CAPTAIN AMERICA (VOL. 1) 615 (Marvel Comics April 2011).
There’s just one little problem here: The United States doesn’t have an extradition treaty with Russia. 16 Extradition is not a judicial function but rather a function of the President’s power to conduct foreign policy. 17 As such, without an extradition treaty, Bucky can’t be extradited. Of course, that’s here in the real world. It’s entirely possible that Russia and the United States have an extradition treaty on Earth-616. Let’s assume there is one; is that enough?
One might think that being convicted in absentia is a problem. What about due process, after all? Unfortunately for Bucky, it is not clear that trying someone in absentia is even prohibited by the United States Constitution, and there is case law supporting the extradition of defendants convicted in absentia in a foreign country. 18
In fact, because extradition is an executive function, the role of the courts in an extradition proceeding is a minimal gatekeeping function. Basically the only question for the court is “are the terms of the extradition treaty being complied with?” This is called the doctrine of non-inquiry, which “precludes extradition magistrates from assessing the investigative, judicial, and penal systems of foreign nations when reviewing an extradition request.” 19 As the Supreme Court explained:
When an American citizen commits a crime in a foreign country, he cannot complain if required to submit to such modes of trial and to such punishment as the laws of that country may prescribe for its own people, unless a different mode be provided for by treaty stipulations between that country and the United States. 20
So Bucky probably couldn’t complain to a court, but luckily that’s not the last stop in the process. Here’s an explanation of the process from a federal circuit court case:
The [extradition] statute establishes a two-step procedure which divides responsibility for extradition between a judicial officer and the Secretary of State. In brief, the judicial officer, upon complaint, issues an arrest warrant for an individual sought for extradition, provided that there is an extradition treaty between the United States and the relevant foreign government and that the crime charged is covered by the treaty. If a warrant issues, the judicial officer then conducts a hearing to determine if “he deems the evidence sufficient to sustain the charge under the provisions of the proper treaty.” If the judicial officer makes such a determination, he “shall certify” to the Secretary of State that a warrant for the surrender of the relator “may issue.” It is then within the Secretary of State’s sole discretion to determine whether or not the relator should actually be extradited. 21
Thus, Bucky (perhaps via his friends in high places) could petition the Secretary of State not to extradite him to Russia. If Russia doesn’t like the decision, its only recourse is diplomatic because extradition treaties generally don’t have enforcement provisions.
So as long as we’re willing to assume (1) that Russia and the US have an extradition treaty on Earth-616 and (2) that Bucky exhausted his political capital already, then it’s entirely possible for Bucky to be extradited under the circumstances presented in the comic.
1. The laws for private parties contracting across international borders is actually pretty well settled and mostly comes down to “choice of laws,” i.e., the parties deciding which nation’s law they’re going to use. Once that choice is made, the remaining issues can be settled by that country’s domestic legal system.
2. See, for example, the nuisance that the Somalians have made of themselves off the Horn of Africa.
3. The definitions of territorial waters, contiguous zones, and exclusive economic zones come from the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, which has been ratified by most of the countries in the world. Before the Convention was created, different countries claimed different territorial waters, ranging from two to six nautical miles.
4. See, e.g., Stan Lee, Jack Kirby et al., FANTASTIC FOUR ANNUAL 1 (Marvel Comics September 1963), in which Namor unsuccessfully invades New York City as a reprisal against the destruction of the original site of Atlantis by nuclear testing.
5. Stan Lee, Jack Kirby et al., Beware the Hidden Land!, in FANTASTIC FOUR 47 (Marvel Comics February 1966).
6. With the exception of spaceships launched from a terrestrial country, which are under the jurisdiction of the country that launched them, much like a ship at sea.
7. 12 Q.B.D. 273 (1884).
8. The controversial doctrine of universal jurisdiction has some of its origins in this concept.
9. 18 U.S.C. § 7(6).
10. Britain declared war on France about a month and a half after France and the American colonies formalized their alliance.
11. The Union actually threatened to declare war against Great Britain if the latter entered the war on the side of the Confederacy, and the historical record suggests that this threat was not an idle one.
12. The various incarnations of DC’s Justice League seem mostly to be more or less informal groups of superheroes who decide to work together, but are not generally organized by any government or governmental agency, and tend not to have any kind of official status.
13. Then again, 2012’s The Avengers and the Marvel Cinematic Universe generally really starts to make it look like a domestic military organization again. S.H.I.E.L.D. is an inter-story and inter-medium ambiguity.
14. But it still doesn’t excuse the fact that the writers took a few decades to make up their minds as to what was actually going on.
15. A Latin phrase that means, roughly, “justification for acts of war.”
16. See list attached to 18 U.S.C. § 3181, available at http://www.state.gov/documents/organization/71600.pdf.
17. See, e.g., Martin v. Warden, 993 F.2d 824, 828 (11th Cir. 1993).
18. Crosby v. United States, 506 U.S. 255 (1993) (holding that Fed. R. Crim. P. 43 permits trials in absentia in at least some cases, declining to address constitutional issue); Gallina v. Fraser, 278 F.2d 77 (1960) (permitting extradition of a defendant convicted in absentia in Italy).
19. Martin, 993 F.2d at 829.
20. Neely v. Henkel, 180 U.S. 109, 123 (1901).
21. United States v. Kin-Hong, 110 F.3d 103, 109 (1st Cir. 1997).
