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0 pointscheckyoursudo5y ago0 comments

I don't think your ideas are unreasonable, though this would have to be governed by any existing treaties, of course. In practice, however, I think that, to use your example, South Korea will act based on its relationship with China rather than your relationship with China. So, if KOR agrees with you that free speech is more important than how China might react to non-extradition, then KOR may not extradite you. However, if KOR thinks that they must turn you over to preserve their relationship, then they might. Again, all of this is of course hypothetical and in the real world should be defined by treaties.

I'll just note that in your example, if C is just trying to stay neutral and acting of its own accord, then the correct term would be that C would deport the suspect to A rather than extradite the suspect to A, unless A is seeking extradition in its own right.

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smichel175y ago

Yes, I am totally agreed that the real world is often very messy. It's oh-so-easy to say how things should work when we can conveniently ignore all the other complexities of international diplomacy. All of this is hypothetical. Including, I am not trying to come to a conclusion on Assange in particular, just form opinions on how things ought to work — and from there, of course, there will be compromises.

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I am imagining a scenario like the UN countries all agreeing on a common standard for extradition.

The guiding principle I'm working off of is that if B and C share the same law against X, then extradition is reasonable. The fuzzy line is where B and C both outlaw X, but each have their own laws against it.

On one hand, it is reasonable. If B and C both outlaw murder, then C should extradite the murderer, because the citizen can't claim ignorance, nor can they claim that "murder isn't illegal here in C."

On the other hand, I have trouble seeing how you'd write a consistent standard here. Sure, it's easy to equivocate premeditated murder across different laws, but what about even manslaughter? Then it requires both countries to have the same definition of negligence, etc.

So basically, the only form of extradition treaty that doesn't seem to pose an unreasonable burden on tourists is, "Here is a set of laws that are enforced in both B and C. If you break these laws in B and then flee to C (or vice versa), you are still under jurisdiction of the law you broke, so you may be extradited."

In practice, that might look like CHN and KOR signing a treaty that unifies their libel law. Then, if you commit libel against someone in CHN while in KOR, you may be extradited. This is quite reasonable, since a tourist would be expected to learn KOR libel law before travelling there.

> I'll just note that in your example, if C is just trying to stay neutral and acting of its own accord, then the correct term would be that C would deport the suspect to A rather than extradite the suspect to A, unless A is seeking extradition in its own right.

Thanks, edited.

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