Widening the US Embargo Against Cuba Extraterritorially: A Few Public International Law Comments on the 'Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity (LIBERTAD) Act of 1996'

On 12 March 1996 President Clinton signed into law the latest anti-Cuba sanctions bill, the 'Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity (LIBERTAD) Act of 1996',' also widely known after its sponsors in Congress, Senator Jesse A. Helms (RepublicanNorth Carolina) and Representative Dan Burton (Republican-Indiana), as the HelmsBurton Act (the 'Act'). Predictably, this immediately caused an uproar in the Westem hemisphere. It led America's closest allies to condemn in diplomatic notes the legislation as a violation of international law, and to threaten to invoke dispute settlement procedures under NAFTA and WTO provisions. The Act raises a number of interesting 'conflict of laws' and 'jurisdiction of courts' questions which cannot be addressed in an exhaustive fashion in this short comment. What should be addressed in a more detailed manner, however, is the intriguing aspect, inherent in this latest piece of extraterritorial US legislation, of the broader 'public order' considerations lying behind such unilateral international law