AALS Academy Program

Go Back

Session Type: AALS Academy Programs

Session Capacity: N/A

Location: Hilton San Francisco Union Square

Room: Continental Ballroom 5

Floor: Ballroom Level

Scholars of law and geography have long recognized that borders are legally and socially constructed, rather than fixed or pre-determined. Yet, even as the federal courts in recent years have demonstrated a renewed interest in the extraterritorial application of U.S. statutory and constitutional law, they have continued to treat the extraterritoriality question as binary in doctrinal terms—that is, to assume that individuals are either in, or wholly outside, the territorial United States. A series of recent cases involving cross-border shootings of foreign nationals by U.S. immigration officers and the “border search” exception to the Fourth Amendment’s Warrant Clause, along with political proposals for the construction of border walls and other security measures, highlight the challenges that the constructed nature of borders poses not just to existing extraterritoriality doctrine, but to far larger questions of legal sovereignty and public policy. Just how much does — and should — law matter at the border? Whose law? This panel will address these questions through a moderated conversation about the current state of relevant U.S. statutory and constitutional doctrines, still-unanswered legal and policy questions, and how to strengthen basic rights protection at and across the border.