Part II Commentaries to Typical Sofa Rules, 20 Jurisdiction

Subject(s):

Military assistance — Host state law — Military matters — Peace keeping

This chapter concerns the exercise of jurisdiction over Visiting Forces. Here, Sending States and Receiving States rely on competing jurisdictional principles, the territorial principle, and that of service jurisdiction, in order to claim the right to exercise their regulatory authority over Visiting Forces. Neither principle can be allowed to triumph over the other without denying a legitimate and vital interest of one of the parties. This is why agreements providing for the exercise of exclusive jurisdiction are rare. The vast majority of status-of-forces agreements (SOFAs) strike some balance between these competing principles and interests, influenced by the political, legal, and operational context of the deployment.