Last month, the United States Supreme Court heard oral argument on whether foreign-cubed securities class actions may be litigated in the United States.
The extraterritorial reach of the federal securities laws is the central focus of Morrison v National Australia Bank. Morrison is the third in a series of fairly recent Supreme Court cases reviewing the extraterritorial application of federal statutes, following the Court’s consideration of the reach of antitrust law in F Hoffmann-LaRoche v Empagran and patent law in Microsoft v AT&T Corp. In the former (a unanimous decision) and Microsoft (an 8-1 decision), the Court concluded that the extraterritorial scope of the federal antitrust and patent statutes was a matter for Congress to decide. In the face of statutes that were ambiguous or silent on the issue, the Court applied a “presumption that United States law governs domestically but does not rule the world.” ...