https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/260/94/
In United States v. Bowman, 260 U.S. 94, 98, 43 S.Ct. 39, 41, 67 L.Ed. 149 (1922), the Supreme Court held that a criminal statute prohibiting conspiracy to defraud a corporation in which the United States is a stockholder applied extraterritorially, despite Congress’ failure to indicate that the statute should be so applied.
In Bowman, the Court explained that, if a statute is to be applied extraterritorially, “it is natural for Congress to say so in the statute, and failure to do so will negative the purpose of Congress in this regard.” Id. at 98, 43 S.Ct. at 41.
The Bowman Court then noted, however, that “the same rule of interpretation should not be applied to 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.” Id.
In international law, extraterritoriality is the state of being exempted from the jurisdiction of local law, usually as the result of diplomatic negotiations.
Historically, this primarily applied to individuals, as jurisdiction was usually claimed on peoples rather than on lands.[1] Extraterritoriality can also be applied to physical places, such as foreign embassies, military bases of foreign countries, or offices of the United Nations. The three most common cases recognized today internationally relate to the persons and belongings of foreign heads of state, the persons and belongings of ambassadors and other diplomats, and ships in international waters.