CRIMINAL JURISDICTION AND THE TERRITORIAL PRINCIPLE

Authors

Wendell Berge, Special Assistant to the Attorney General, Washington, D. C.

Abstract

The authority of legislatures and courts in criminal matters is supposed to be circumscribed by the territorial boundaries of the state. That as a general proposition the criminal law of a state has no extraterritorial operation, few lawyers would question. But an uncritical acceptance of the proposition is not warranted. Merely to assert that the authority of a state over crime ends at its territorial boundaries is of no help in settling jurisdictional questions in complicated crime situations in which the constituent acts of the crime occur in different states. Modern criminals have little concern for political boundaries except as such boundaries are an aid in effecting a criminal purpose. This suggests that perhaps the state, on the other hand, can no longer afford to observe such a strict punctilio as heretofore in the application of the territorial principle of criminal jurisdiction.

Recommended Citation

Wendell Berge, CRIMINAL JURISDICTION AND THE TERRITORIAL PRINCIPLE, 30 Mich. L. Rev. 238 (1931).
Available at: https://repository.law.umich.edu/mlr/vol30/iss2/5