1/Trump Media sues Brazilian Judge as court considers coup plot by Bolsonaro. Read: Long arm of US law used not to promote democracy or human rights but far right nationalism. Stunning turn both for US role in the world and how US law might work in that new paradigm. nytimes.com
www.nytimes.com
2/Starting in the 1990s, US courts became a nexus for human rights activists as they tried to bring international firms to justice. They could do this because of the size of US markets and the reach of US extraterritorial law. earthrights.org
earthrights.org
3/Congress often promoted this, passing laws that said in effect, if you want to list on our stock markets and sell to our customers you have to play by our rules -- not just in the US but globally. And the rules were about human rights, democracy, corruption. congress.gov
www.congress.gov
4/For a more academic take on how this extraterritorial reach functioned see this piece. What is remarkable is that foreign governments ramped up their own enforcement of these laws so as to avoid that their firms got brought before US courts. cambridge.org
www.cambridge.org
5/But conservative think tanks began a multiyear campaign to undermine this extraterritoriality approach. The central logic was about legal overreach. But it was part of a general trend to get law out of regulating big business. yris.yira.org
yris.yira.org
6/In the first days of the Trump Admin, it seemed like the logical next step in this judicial agenda -- stop enforcing extraterritorial laws (even if they may undermine the rule of law and for US firms to engage in bribery...). reuters.com
www.reuters.com
7/But the Trump Media case takes the agenda a step further. It jettisons talk of judicial deference and seeks to use US law again as a weapon. But not to promote human rights or end corruption. Instead, it aims to ungag Bolsonaro and the coup plotters. usnews.com
www.usnews.com
8/Ultimately, the Trump Media case could be a harbinger of a strategy to use domestic US law to shape the international order away from liberal democracy towards far right nationalism. journals.sagepub.com
journals.sagepub.com