District Court Cites Professor Dodge's Article on State Presumptions Against Extraterritoriality

On Oct. 12, a federal district court in Minnesota cited Professor William S. Dodge’s article “Presumptions Against Extraterritoriality in State Law,” which was published in 2020 in the UC Davis Law Review. The case concerned whether Minnesota’s Human Rights Act, which applies to an employee “who resides or works” in Minnesota, applies to a Michigan resident working for a Minnesota company who spent approximately 20% of her time in the state. Dodge’s article showed that 20 states have presumptions against the extraterritorial application of their statutes, that 17 states do not, and that the status of the presumption in the remaining 13 states is unclear. Minnesota is one of the unclear states.

Professor Dodge is Martin Luther King Jr. Professor of Law and John D. Ayer Chair in Business Law at UC Davis School of Law. He is a leading expert on international law, international transactions, and international dispute resolution and a founding editor of the Transnational Litigation Blog (TLB). He served as Counselor on International Law to the Legal Adviser at the U.S. Department of State from 2011 to 2012 and as a reporter for the American Law Institute’s Restatement (Fourth) of Foreign Relations Law from 2012 to 2018. Professor Dodge is a co-author of Transnational Business Problems and Transnational Litigation in a Nutshell, and a co-editor of International Law in the U.S. Supreme Court: Continuity and Change, which won the American Society of International Law’s 2012 certificate of merit. He has authored more than 70 other publications in books and law reviews.