Territorial jurisdiction and criminalization

The nature of jurisdiction and its relation to the criminal law is either poorly understood or neglected altogether. Jurisdiction is often viewed either as a purely technical matter – a procedural hurdle to be crossed before a court can hear a particular case – or as something linked pragmatically to the limits of enforcement of the law. This is particularly true in relation to territorial jurisdiction, where the idea of territory is treated as though it were natural and self-evident, without acknowledgement of the way that it is shaped by particular legal and political institutions. The present article has two aims. First it identifies and analyses the principal features of the paradigm of territorial jurisdiction as this has developed in English law, looking in particular at the way the idea of ‘territory’ has shaped and been shaped by the development of the criminal law. It then goes on to explore the relationship between jurisdiction and criminalization by showing how the development of the paradigm of territorial jurisdiction was linked, not only to the emergence and form of certain laws, but more generally to the idea of a criminal law as a body of norms applied consistently and seamlessly within a given legal space.