e. Passive Personality Principle

What is the Passive Personality Principle?

A State may apply law – particularly criminal law – to an act committed outside its territory by a person not its national where the victim of the act was its national.

The principle has not been ordinarily accepted for ordinary torts or crimes, but is increasingly accepted as applied to terrorist and other organized attacks on a state’s nationals by reason of their nationality, or to assassination of a state’s diplomatic representatives or other officials. (Bernas, citing The Comment on § 402 of Third Restatement)