This is a spin-off of the thread about havens.

Extraterritoriality: what is it?

According to canon materials, it means that certain individuals are immune to national jurisdiction, as opposed to the jurisdiction of their sponsoring corporation. It also means that the marked, differentiable property of a corporation (of at least AA status) is not in the jurisdiction of the nation including it.

In the real world, historically, there are two basic models that resemble this. The first is diplomatic immunity, which is a special case that clearly does not apply here (there's no supply of credentials, no revocation procedure or anything similar) and the second case relates to the demands of international corporations (and their sponsoring governments) in the imperial age. At the time they were seen (as in the case of China and various foreign governments) as a national humiliation, and wars erupted because of them (such as the Opium Wars).

This second case is a lot closer to what is being presented in canon.

So the question this raises is: why would nations worldwide submit to such a humiliation? Especially since according to canon, quite a few simply ignore it, without apparent catastrophes following. Both Tirs, as well as Manchuria are on that list. As presented, none of this makes a whole lot of sense. I could see a few really broken or small jurisdictions being bullied into accepting the state of affairs, but I can't really see a reconsolidated UCAS, CAS and others accepting it without someone holding a gun to their heads.

So what is more plausible?

Let's start by understanding the scope of the result, the obstacles, and what similar cases exist today.

What we are talking about is a removal of power and autonomy from governments. Governments are not in the business of giving those up, and in fact regularly expand their power in the course of doing business. The exceptions come about when the governments are weak for some reason, forced by war or popular protests or enticed by greater gains elsewhere.

An example of greater gains: trade treaties, in which there are stipulated dispute resolution mechanisms (for instance NAFTA). Governments want to promote wealth and productivity to make their populations happier, and in this cause they will establish a process for differential treatment of corporations.

If we look at canon extraterritoriality, there's no balancing gain for national governments. More money? Nope - in fact they arguably lose sources of revenue. More power? Nope - they give up jurisdiction. More glory? Nope - it's humiliation all around.

What would it take to make a government accept a massive humiliation? If history is any guide, overwhelming force. Period. Do the megas have massive military power? No, or at least nothing to compare with national forces, and they sure as hell don't want to look imperial if they don't have to.

So there has to be a quid pro quo. There has to be some reason for a government to offer up privileges to big corporations.

Here's a thought.

The first model is that a corp comes to a government and says: "We want to establish a company town, under our own rules and jurisdictions, and we want our executives to have special legal privileges that place them beyond the power of your regular cops. But wait, before you laugh and kick us out, this is going to be so profitable for us that we will pay an enhanced lease fee for the land, which will more than make up for tax losses, and you get to save money on policing, and of course government officials will get cushy jobs with us on retirement."

This works, because it can be justified on the grounds of cost, of profit, and of corruption. It also works because the same corp can, five years later, say: "Y'know, we'd love to expand our holdings here and pay you many more times the cash while we establish huge factories and employ thousands of people, but La Republica de las Bananas is offering us a much lower lease rate. Would you like to sweeten the pot with an extradition agreement so that miscreants can't escape our corporate justice?"

Pretty soon you may have a few megacorps arranging similar deals on similar terms, and now instead of shoving something down the throat of a government that can simply revoke a corporate charter, pierce the corporate veil and shove everybody in jail for criminal conspiracy and pocket the cash, you have a clear quid pro quo arrangement.

It then only makes sense to have multilateral talks between megas and governments in which the terms of these deals are regularised, with governments giving up limited chunks of jurisdiction in return for fat sacks of cash money, plus wonderful prizes for their servants.

Another model might be where you have a truly wrecked piece of territory. It's rife with guerillas, ghouls, or just plain toxic waste, and the government says to the corps: "My friends, we're setting up an auction. Whoever will clean up this place, may within ten calendar years arrange a long term lease (999 years) on this property and hold effective independent jurisdiction over this area. Here are the documents laying out the area defined, the terms of approval for what constitutes adequate rehabilitation of the area, and you can submit your bids for the lease terms to our office here. Don't be strangers, now! Er, the reserve price is $100/acre/year in 2020 prices."

In this case, the government willingly opens negotiations for very clear reasons, with clear benefits for the corps as well as the government. The public interest is nominally served, by cleaning up blight, and it offers corps a foothold in a world gone mad.

Again, to rationalise the different cases, a wide-ranging treaty can be negotiated some time after the fact.

I'm sure that there are other models, and I'd love to hear other people's ideas.

You've overlooked the third premise, and the one that the situation is based on, which is that of foreign embassies and similar international agreements.

When you're at the Russian consulate in Washington DC, you are *not* under US juridstiction, but under Russian.

When you're on Shiawase's corporate campus, you're under Shiawase law.

Sawm thing, only with massive corporations having control of the area, rather than a state government.

No, that wasn't an oversight at all. I examined it, and then rejected it because it's not particularly similar. I observed that there's no presentation of credentials, no procedure analogous to declaring someone persona non grata and if you want to go deeper into it, there's no analogue of a diplomatic raison d'etre, nor establishment of a mission.

Diplomatic missions are there for a recognised purpose in international relations. They have a particular role, and the delineation of consulates, embassies and their grounds is all part of a well-understood structure.

Corporate grounds, on the other hand, have no such reciprocity of function, have no justification in international relations, and the immunities extended to executives and other power players in the corporation have more in common with the immunities of foreign nationals under the treaties imposed on China in the dying years of the nineteenth century. In particular, the Business Recognition Accords give the megacorps prerogatives without much in the way of review by the national government, whereas if the UCAS didn't want an embassy from the CAS (improbable, but hypothetical) then they could simply tell them to go pound sand. They don't have this option, under the BRA, with respect to Cross or Wuxing.

Extraterritorial areas under the BRA are there for commerce, plain and simple, and the big boys get it because ... well, because they're big.

In short, I discarded the analogy of embassies because it doesn't apply.

I'm sorry you disagree, but that is explicitly the canon explanation. http://shadowrun.wikia.com/wiki/Shiawase_Decision

Corporate territory is sovereign territory, and extraterratorial corps are nation-states into themselves. The explanation of how Shiawase managed to make this happen is above, but it is to the letter exactly how it works in SR.

Oh, I got that part. I'm absolutely up to the minute on that facet. This is all in the context of verisimilitude in the development of extraterritoriality. The canon explanation is, to be polite, somewhat lacking. I'm trying to figure out what would make more sense, and yet reasonably closely approximate the setting that we know and love.

Premise: there is extraterritoriality

Question: how did we get here and what form does it take in detail?

Because as a picker of nits, the canonical history makes me twitch, and when players want explanations because they are trying to ride the line of what's possible and meaningful, I end up tied in knots.

Actually, this is all there, it's jst on teh down-low.

For instance, COrporate citizens have a corporate SIN ... it's tied in to teh number that they broadcast everywhere, their credentials on sight to everyone. Just by walking around, they, literally, broadcast "I am a citzen of Shiawase" ... they just don't have to dig into a pocket and root out an ID card. More efficient. Declaration of non-persona is also included ... someone can be stripped of their corporate SIN and kicked out. Corporate enclaves can also give sanctuarary, for instance when a willing extraction slips out of, say, Ares, and into Shiawase territory, Ares can *request* that they get them back, as they're their corporate property, but Shiawase's under no obligation to do so as the only authority that matters on their property is theirs alone. Ares could escalate, but that's the same as if a nation decided to break into a foreign embassy to grab someone. International Incident in*deed*.

As for diplomatic relations, there are several. MOST are profit based of course, that's what corps *do*, but not all. Ares is always wanting to bring more people into the Ares way of life, and possibly accept new citizens, run espionage, support ciizens that are in another nation by serving as a consulate to contact in case of trouble, watch for media coverage and environmental issues ... they stay *busy* out there.

Actually, this is all there, it's jst on teh down-low.

For instance, COrporate citizens have a corporate SIN ... it's tied in to teh number that they broadcast everywhere, their credentials on sight to everyone. Just by walking around, they, literally, broadcast "I am a citzen of Shiawase" ... they just don't have to dig into a pocket and root out an ID card. More efficient. Declaration of non-persona is also included ... someone can be stripped of their corporate SIN and kicked out. Corporate enclaves can also give sanctuarary, for instance when a willing extraction slips out of, say, Ares, and into Shiawase territory, Ares can *request* that they get them back, as they're their corporate property, but Shiawase's under no obligation to do so as the only authority that matters on their property is theirs alone. Ares could escalate, but that's the same as if a nation decided to break into a foreign embassy to grab someone. International Incident in*deed*.

As for diplomatic relations, there are several. MOST are profit based of course, that's what corps *do*, but not all. Ares is always wanting to bring more people into the Ares way of life, and possibly accept new citizens, run espionage, support ciizens that are in another nation by serving as a consulate to contact in case of trouble, watch for media coverage and environmental issues ... they stay *busy* out there.

I was thinking about this last night.

How would police investigate a crime? Would KE (or a similar security corporation) have jurisdiction across different megacorps they served? Would they share information with the megacorp?

Real example: A shadowrun team came into my Corporate facility's cafeteria and had lunch. I, the investigating officer working for a 3rd-party law enforcement firm, would like to example the security footage to see if they match the criminals I know who pulled a similar stunt at at facility in another megacorp. However, the megacorp's cafeteria has "high level meetings everyday"; would they share information?

Something innocuous as that type of security footage would make actually investigating a crime and producing a chain of evidence really problematic. UNLESS, the 3rd party security force had agreements in place to share information among their clients, without divulging information.

Either way, a fascinating set of circumstances.

The corps generally don't share crime data, and the governments aren't too willing to help the corps in return (Theirs is a bitter relationship, most often) ... this can change based on social settings, of course. If, for instance, you're a racist D-bag with a long relationship with Renraku, then you're likely to order your police to work hand-in-hand with them. If you're a Lone Star officer and Knight Errant got hit, you'll probably sit back, let the Shadowrun team roll past you, and when KE shows up and asks why, you shrug, say, "They weren't speeding," and smile over your coffee cup.

Remember: Shadowrun Megas are a lot like Feudal Empires ... they snarl at one another, and the "Bold captain with a Letter of Marque" in one is "Lowlife pirate scum" in another. Admitting that a group of 'runners broke in to your secure facility and made off with your new prototype Guacamole is a huge embarassment and they don't take kindly to all the laughing and pointing that follows, so they don't ask the other corps about it if at all possible.

So, you can expect that most investigations will be road blocked, with a whole lot of territorialism and "My crew will handle it." talk. If you think that there's bad blood between teh FBI and local police, you'd best believe that it's nothing compared to when the cops (Lone Star) and local security from Firm X have a pissing contest.

Oh, it has been a long time since the last time that topic was brought up...

No. Not at all.

When you're in a Russian embassy or consulate anywhere in the US, you are still inside a jurisdiction of the US.

Diplomatic immunity means US law enforcement agencies cannot search the building for evidence or suspect, and cannot detain nor prosecute diplomatic personnels without an agreement from the Russia government (through its ambassador or ministry of foreign affairs).

If a non-diplomat commit a murder inside an embassy, and even if the ambassador denies the police access to gather evidence, the murder could still be prosecuted based on testimonies and evidence gathered outside the embassy ground.

Russian laws may apply following the original meaning of extraterritoriality, which has nothing to do with diplomatic immunity. A lot of countries (especially the US) allow themselves to prosecute crimes committed abroad by or against one of their citizens (or corporations). That's extraterritoriality - applying a country's law outside its territory. So the Russian government could prosecute the murder by or of a Russian diplomat (even if it has been committed outside its embassy). Notorious examples of such prosecutions by the US include 1998 embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania and 2000 USS Cole bombing.

US also specifically has a Supreme Court ruling on the 1979 US embassy storming in Tehran asserting the fact that the embassy was not US soil.

The only case where only Russian laws apply is when you're an Hollywood set the screenwriter called out as a Russian consulate. In Real Life, no.

According to canon, the road to corporate extraterritoriality in the US was first opened by the Supreme Court (which never ever had a problem with humiliating the administration) in 2001, then was pushed further down the road when the major corporations struck the deal with the governement to fund the rebuilding of Manhattan after 2005.

I can imagine Japanese and South Korean corporations also getting a similar deal in exchange for investments in the former republic of North Korea (no reference for this in canon, except for a mention of MCT recovering North Korea nukes).

Corporate extraterritoriality as we know it in the Shadowrun RPG did not become an international norm before the BRA 2042. That is, we don't know what exact level of privileges the corporations had before that. Then, by 2042, US and Canada have merged under a corrupt government, CAS and California have split and lost a chunk of their territory to Aztlan, Germany is recovering from a Russian attack on Berlin, Great Britain is a dictatorship anyway, while Japan and Aztlan are powerhouses who precisely intend on using extraterritorial megacorporate holdings instead of straight-out invasion for their expansion.

I could go on for a long time on this topic, so for now I'll starting pointing to my own take on the matter based on canon : http://nmath.free.fr/onyx/en/files/megacorporatism.html

alternately, megacorps due have the raw power to force it down the throats of the local governments, it just isn't military in nature (or at least, not exclusively military in nature... there's something to be said for the fact that the corporate court can decide to use thor shots at a moment's notice, while the various governments are not noted as having that capability).

The other thing about the Shiawase Decision that seems implausible to me is the idea that if something like that happened, everyone in North America would just sort of roll over and take it.

Recently, a cattle rancher named Cliven Bundy was able to rally a band of armed extremists against the Bureau of Land Management over the comparatively minor issue of grazing fees for his cattle.

So, you'd think that realistically, something like the Shiawase Decision might kick off a civil war, insurgency, widespread civil noncompliance, or something.

To be fair, the Cliven Bundy affair was so strange that had something like that been alluded to in the canon when it was first written it wouldn't have seemed believable at the time.

I agree with you about the Shiawase decision's weirdness, and the weirdness of the people in just accepting it. It seems like a prime source for hysterical, homocidal outrage.

Cliven Bundy's story is an interesting one. It's not widely spoken about, but the BLM has a long, long, LONG history of being as popular as a yellowjacket at a barbecue, west of the Mississippi. Ever heard of the sagebrush wars? I won't go into it here (and for the record, I don't quite take Cliven's side on all this either, although I think there's plenty of blame to go round) but there's a strong case to be made that between the BLM and the USDA you can find most of the reasons for the general popularity of the federal government decreasing the further west you go.

So yes, there's every reason to believe that both the Seretech and Shiawase decisions would have been more likely to result in lynchings, in a turbulent, frightened, starving population.

The 2001 Shiawase decision retroactively appears as a decisive moment in megacorporate history once megacorporations have become the dominant force in the world. But I'm not certain it would have appeared as such to people at the time. A group of terrorists had broke into a nuclear plant with weapons and explosives. The federal government sued the corporation for reckless endangerment and the corporation answered by accusing the government of actively preventing them from providing an adequate level of security.

The Shiawase decision is not something you can blame on the White House or the Congress for. In this regards, you can compare it to Citizens United versus the Federal Election Commission, which have yet to cause a civil war, insurgency or widespread civil noncompliance.

If anything, the corporation would be the target of such unrest. And that's actually what was supposed to have happened. It ended up with US soldiers of Amerindian descent seizing an ICBM because one of those corporations was getting free access to national parks and Amerindian tribal reserves. I'm not certain that was anything like a random, isolated event, for the government to consider rounding up entire tribes to put them into extralegal detention camps was the thing to do.

The other aspect of this is that I see the idea that the federal government would initially be more of a hindrance than a help to security seems to me to be very much an artifact of the 80s. (As perhaps it should be since Shadowrun is very much an 80s game. It's a stereotype of the 80s that the feds are all incompetent and unreasonable and only the locals can handle truly hair situations; see Lone Wolf McQuade.) Today, the Department of Energy has a SWAT team and I am pretty sure they exist to be able to intervene in exactly a Shiawase-type situation. In general, government agencies have become increasingly militarized and police forces at all levels seem to have clear protocols that allow them to use deadly force within the legal framework.

In contrast, the idea that the government would provide an anemic or fuddy-duddy response to attempted nuclear terrorism and that a private entity would be the ones better able to step up with overwhelming force...well, like I said, that just kind of strikes me like an 80s idea.

Compare government responses to riots back in the 60s and 70s versus today. There is a huge increase in firepower, specialized training, and specialized equipment compared to back then. What they have today is not perfect either but compare it to the Keystone Cops type show that you read about when you get into historical examples and there has been a huge improvement.

Not quite sure I agree with you there. Sure, the '80s were full of the Myth of the Lone Hero (see Rambo for examples) but a large part of that also had to do with reactions to the past. Vietnam, and the way that the White House got involved in operational decisions to the detriment of combat effectiveness, Nixon's impeachment, Carter's fecklessness ... it all added up.

But on the other side of the coin, the Clinton era didn't do much to convince anyone that the feds had much of an answer to ... well, much of anything. In fact, the two decades following Reagan got us nowhere impressive as far as federal competence was concerned. Whether it's the deregulation of retail banking, the CDA (and the supreme court case that crushed it like an empty beer can), or Heckuvajob Brownie, or the Iraq invasion, or Whitewater and a blue dress - it just didn't look good then, and looking back at it now I feel the need for a drink.

So no, I don't buy any kind of vision of the feds as competent, and speaking as someone who actually deals with federal regulation on a very regular basis, I'm often left staggered at the sheer counterproductive madness I face. Sure, there are good people working for the feds - great people, even - but a federal response being effective? I, and a lot of people I know, are very cynical about that.



In the heat of the moment, it depends who's on the ground. How long will it take to get the federal asskickers into the place? How well will they be prepared for what's going on? Compared to the security on the ground, who know the place like the back of their hands, and who are already there, pointing their guns at the bad guys? That part's not where my suspension of disbelief suffers.



Two words: Kent State. National guardsmen, with fixed bayonets, clearing an area and ultimately opening volley fire at a crowd. I'm not saying it was a good thing. Not even nearly. But it kind of makes the response to recent events look weak sauce. And yet, it used to be very nearly standard practice, not that long ago in history. Just look at the Bonus Marchers. Again, I'm not taking anybody's side here, and I acknowledge that historical arguments can be brought forward in all cases, to support multiple sides, but I'll bet you that if the response to the riots after Michael Brown had been to clear the streets with bayonets and battle rifle fire, those streets would have been real clear, real quick.

The reason I bring this up (and I apologise to the board ops for mentioning real world politics, but it is in context) is to point out that in some ways we've actually tuned the public conflict level of slaughter way down over the years. And if that does sometimes reflect needing more warm bodies dishing out more beatings rather than shootings, and actually training them to be ready to do some of that, then yeah. That's a thing that will happen.

At most, I'll agree with you that the feds are ramping up the level of readiness for violence in recent years, but I'll observe that there is a corresponding level of real world resistance as well. And interestingly, the more people seem to think that their biggest risk is a pepper spraying and a night or three in jail, the more willing they seem to take that risk.

Bringing this back to Shadowrun: I'm quite happy with the idea that people would have considered the Shiawase decision reasonable, given the circumstances, especially in exonerating the corp for looking after the public interest even while the feds tried to pin responsibility on them. Where I part from the canon history is that I can't see other countries giving a damn what SCOTUS decides in the first place, and I also don't see where extraterritoriality springs from the logic of the case as presented. At most, you can say that the corp gets off the hook that one time because they acted rationally in the public interest, and in a fashion broadly consistent with defence of self and others. Stopping crazy armed terrorists is pretty much textbook self defence, even if nuclear materials aren't involved.

So when I say that my problem is with people accepting the Shiawase decision, the problem doesn't stem from the decision as such (how many people actually care about the court on a daily basis?) but from its interpretation in giving rise to extraterritoriality as an option. A decision on the one hand that corporate security can stop terrorists? That's fine, logical, and people would be lining up to give them medals and handjobs. Turning that decision into a basis for megacorporate immunity? No. Nope, not even close. No. Try again. The same people who got violent at the WTC riots would be just itching for an excuse to throw molotov cocktails at corporate buildings, and at the feds.

The canon explanations frequently mention diplomatic immunity and embassies, but from the context it becomes clear that they are talking about the public misconception of diplomatic immunity (embassies being the territory of the respective nation) rather than the actual workings of it (diplomatic missions are subject to treaties in which the host nations cedes its right to law enforcement).

Ares does not have to ask the UCAS to please accept their candidate for heading an extraterritorial office, and doesn't have to shelve the appointment if the UCAS simply refuses
Ares does not have to ask the UCAS to operate a wireless transmitter, as they would be required to under the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations.
The UCAS cannot tell an individual or the entire Ares branch office that they are no longer welcome and shall GTFO.
The UCAS and its outsourced executive can arrest an Ares citizen just like any other foreign citizen.




Anyway, how did that come about? First of all, we should not forget that the backstory of SR is a means to a narrative end. You want to write "the cyberpunk RPG" (actual German subtitle of 1st and 2nd Edition), cyberpunk means balkanized nations and corporate citizenship, so you write a history where the government retreats even further than the "bathtub state" crowd would ever dream of, while the legislative shows extreme deference to to the wishes of corporations.
But at the same time, political movements which want to dismantle the government and/or fawn over the sacred "job creators" are not exactly made up from whole cloth...

Ja, genau! This is what I meant by saying that I rejected the canonical explanation of extraterritoriality as being diplomatic in nature. It's a lot more like the unequal treaties imposed on places like China and (as it was called then) Siam.



This is why I'm working on SRV as an obsessive fan.

I mean, dedicated employee of Neural Necromancy, Inc.

You mean the WTO riots and the NYT's phantom molotovs?

We are assured in fluff that neo-anarchists, shadowrunners and various other underground groups despise the corps, but actual instances of doing something about it seem to be just as elusive as the incendiaries in 1999. Even though there certainly is enough weaponry available on the streets for some serious terrorism...the average runner's apartment probably holds more arms than most terror groups ever possessed.

Truth ^

The Departement of Energy does not have a team in each of the 60 or so nuclear power plants in the US. The DoE has special response team for its own facilities (Los Alamos, Oak Ridge, etc.). Otherwise each company that operate a nuclear power plant must establish (or usually contract) its own special response team on-site.

Then, the Shiawase decision is not about the government's contribution to security. It's about the government hampering the corporations effort to also contribute to security. Shiawase lawyers knew better than to try to shift the blame on law enforcement agencies (for which it likely was impossible to reach the plant within the timeframe of the attack anyway). No, they shifted the blame on bureaucracy (with bonus points for making the Nuclear Regulatory Commission looking like they were the ones trying to shift the blame).

The canon never addressed what was the issue with the NRC requirements (the best idea I could come up with would have been a requirement for Shiawase to strictly separate the power plant's security from the neighboring aluminum mill's security, thus preventing a quick reinforcement).

Also, the Shiawase decision did not come out as an isolated event. Three years before, the government went after Seretech corporation, whose security personnels had killed two hundred rioters in New York and New Jersey. The corporation had won that round, so the administration moves in the Shiawase affair may have appeared as an attempt to crackdown on corporate security.

I would expect Seretech and/or Shiawase to assert the idea that their security services do qualify as "a well regulated militia", clinging on a debate that has well enough fuel (and for which the idea that the government may not be doing a good job in protecting the citizens does not appear to be a big deal). People would not read the actual SCOTUS decision. How they spin the story is just as important.

First, I wouldn't expect the 2001 Shiawase decision to spring up megacorporate extraterritoriality in the exact terms that show up in the Shadowrun Seattle setting by 2050. To an extent, it's like pinpointing August 1945 as the beginning of the "nuclear age," even though it wasn't until the Soviet Union got the bomb in 1949 (and, to a slighter extend, the advent of ICBM technology) that the implications of nuclear deterrence got truly shaped.
So I expect things like corporate passports, executive management immunity and so on to have appeared much later, possibly only in the 2042 Business Recognition Accords. When playing Shadowrun, we tend to think first and foremost of corporate extraterritoriality as an exemption from criminal laws, because that's the most noteworthy aspect. But it may not have been included from start as well. Exemption from business regulations on the other hand, would have been a valuable first step for corporations.

On the legal ground, the closest idea I was able to find in US judicial history is the Lochner era (1905-1937) named after the Lochner v. New York decision. The court held at the time that the government had no right to limit the people rights to freely enter into contract. Pushing Lochner logic to an extreme, it would be okay for an employee to sign a contract stipulating that he will be shot if he tries to leave the office with classified documents. West Coast Hotel v. Parrish put an end to the Lochner era, establishing the government's right to interfere in contracts to protect health and safety of the people.
My idea would be that, if the Nuclear Regulatory Commission prevented Shiawase Atomics from signing a contract with Shiawase Aluminum that gave the latter security personnel full access to the power plant in case of a attack, Shiawase could claim that the government interference in its freedom of contract had in fact an adverse effect on the safety of the people.
To allow corporations to run and secure nuclear power plants that represent a major risk, the government ought to lift any regulations that could hamper the security effort. To call this extraterritoriality could actually come as a concession from the corporation: such freedom of contracts between the corporation and its employees, contractors and suppliers, as well as the unrestricted fielding of a "well regulated militia" would not have to extend beyond the limits of the hazardous facility.

I know this is far-fetched, but it's the best I could come up with short of rewriting SR canon history.

There is no reason however for a SCOTUS decision to instantly or under short notice become a world standard. The point is somewhat moot in Third World most corrupt countries, where corporations already enjoy a de facto 2050-style extraterritoriality (complete with armed thugs !). Also, the EU actually established in real life something to which the "extraterritorial" term could apply, albeit in its original legal meaning: corporations can operate in any country in the EU following the labor law of their home country (so you can apply say Slovenia minimum wage and working hours regulations to Polish workers working in Germany). So maybe it's a bit of different things going on in all those countries that was mixed up a "the advent of corporate extraterritoriality" before the corporation pushed to align all those status on the US one.

I appreciate your efforts, but I feel that I should point out that I'm actually rewriting Shadowrun pretty much. I've already written a first draft of about half the content, including thumbnail sketches of Matrix and Magic (lots more to come, though) and the canon history. That's what all these crazy threads are about that I keep starting.

So don't be too shy about suggesting other ways to view the whole thing. I'll read it all.

You're in for a ride... (if Nath has the time to write it all down)

I'm all for it! Here is something to get you all started, a draft from my current writings:

It was late 2010, with famine stalking the globe, wars turning nastier than ever before, and VITAS still raging everywhere. The nation of Angola has, or had, an exclave a bit to the north along the west coast of Africa, called Cabinda. Cabinda was turbulent as a tornado, with a strong separatist movement and all sorts of trouble, both internally and from bordering states. Cabinda was also blessed (or cursed) with abundant offshore oil. The government of Angola desperately needed the oil because otherwise how were they going to finance holding their country together, and they desperately needed peace in Cabinda, because otherwise how were they going to get the oil? Enter the Pantexan Corporation, once an oil corporation but now heavily diversified. They made the government an offer: Pantexan would run the oil rigs, manage the shipment, pay a handsome fee for the privilege, and also guarantee the policing and securing of Cabinda. All they wanted was one thing: extraterritoriality in jurisdictional terms around the harbour of Cabinda, and extraterritorial privileges for their key personnel.

These days we can tell a deal with the devil when we see one, but Angola was desperate, and like a drowning man clutching at the life preserver they didn't stop to see that it wasn't covered in leeches. The funny thing is that at the time, it looked great. Pantexan were as good as their word, they kept that oil flowing (which was quite an achievement), they paid their fees like champs, and they brought in some competent muscle to knock heads until people figured out that compliance was the better option. Rumour has it that a lot of their experts were old south african military, but I don't see that it matters. Pantexan were the heroes of the day, and for years after Angola did not come to regret their decision. Pantexan even were smart enough to guard food shipments and markets with their own guards. People want to riot a lot less when they have full bellies and they watched when that thug down the street just got tied to a lamppost and beaten with a bicycle inner tube.

You know what's worse than a bad idea? A bad idea that catches on. Pretty soon some big corporations worldwide were offering to solve all sorts of problems, if they could just have a bite at the apple of extraterritoriality. They weren't turned down a whole lot, partly because they were smart enough to offer the deal to the desperate and corrupt. But I'm getting ahead of myself again, because the problems were just ramping up.

Good writing.

So thinking about this I guess there are three sort of components:

1.) Governments have to be weak to the point of losing legitimacy

2.) The egomaniacs that usually populate corrupt governments have to feel so desperate that they not only accept kickbacks and back the corporations, but they have to be willing to make the symbolic step of granting extraterritoriality, which is psychologically hard for an egomaniac to do.

3.) Down the road, when conditions have stabilized and the government egomaniacs want to feel respected again, they need to have found that they have neither the respect nor the resources to really command anyone anymore, because most people owe their jobs and their financial security to an extraterritorial corporation.

Yes, although if you have the right kind of kleptocrat, as long as the money comes in they'll lease their whole country and collect the fees without a moment's hesitation. The corporation's Mephistopheles just has to point out that governance is hard, and depositing money in the bank is oh so easy and feels oh so good. Of course, the fact that the kleptocrat has the excuse that some place is basically ungovernable just sweetens the pot.

I've also written a bit about how the UCAS got in on the action:

By this time, extraterritoriality deals were starting to affect the so-called rich world, including the CAS and UCAS. Siemens Ecomonitor got the nod to take a long term lease on a section of South Caroline beachfront that had been ruined by a tanker full of toxic chemicals being pushed aground by a sudden hurricane, courtesy of Daniel Howling Coyote and the Great Ghost Dance. Siemens (the parent company) got the extraterritoriality deal, and bought a 999 year lease on five hundred acres of land, then started to clean it up and build on it. They did right on their end of the deal, but they didn't do it out of the goodness of their twisted little hearts. They made it a showcase piece, and got incredible press on how gorgeously pristine it was, and how their five star hotel was a magnificent, and environmentally responsible way of dealing with what had once been a blight. Since the good citizens of the CAS were only too happy to blame the wicked injuns for the blighted area, Siemens came out smelling of roses, and even some pretty conservative governments were willing to give this corporate extraterritoriality thing a try.

It depends if you intend on rewriting the Shadowrun setting as a whole, or only Shadowrun history, with the goal of reaching a similar or identical setting in the 2050-2070 bracket. In the former case, you have to ask yourself if corporate extraterritoriality really is a desirable thing.

The point of the setting is to write stories that take place inside it. I'm not sure there are many plot elements that require corporate extraterritoriality to be part of the setting.
Security guards with shooting to kill with military-grade weapons? Barely an extension of the "stand-your-ground" principle. Actual corporate military forces? Ask Blackwater. The CEO getting away with whatever crimes and evil experiments the corporate committed? Corrupt officials and scapegoats will do it. The only story that strikes me as hard (or at least harder) to tell in a setting without corporate extraterritoriality is the dumped corporate employee losing his legal identity along with his job.

That works at least for the US and Third World countries. Other countries in the setting, from Europe to Japan, might rely on corporate extraterritoriality to justify having automatic weapons and heavy firefight.

The existence of corporate extraterritoriality also makes some stories difficult if not impossible to tell. Stories that involve a public scandal or the threat of it makes no sense when law does not apply to corporations and brainwashed consumers is an even more central element of the setting. Which is actually one big issue for a RPG whose premise involve protagonists who are supposed to be valued for deniability. It is actually very difficult to have a reasonable argument to explain why the megacorporations resort to shadowrunners instead of in-house black ops team.
The workarounds who have been brought up are not completely satisfying. The current Shadowrun setting basically gives two ways out: having the scandal involve a small, non-extraterritorial corporation, or having the scandal so big that it could go up to the Corporate Court.
I always found it interesting that in the early days of Shadowrun, the Seattle Sourcebook actually mentioned the FBI investigating MCT connection with Yakuza or Federated-Boeing involvement in a coup d'état in Malaysia, which the setting developped since makes non-sensical.


As far as verisimilitude is concerned, extraterritoriality creates more trouble than it solves.

The very idea of megacorporation is that people don't matter, only profits do. Megacorporations should not really care if their guards or scientists get caught and sent to prisons by the government. They'll replace them. And there's no point for a megacorporation to run its own judicial and prison system (the ideas of guinea pigs or penitentiary legion being marginal at best).

What the megacorporation ought to actively seek is immunity from all those pesky regulations about pollution, safety, quality control or working hours. Which while it makes sense for the setting, is not something that'll show up a lot in stories. Corporate passports may have an interest when politics get in the way of business (when you really want your US executive to head the Iran division, or your Israeli scientist to move to a facility in Saudi Arabia) but that would not be a major point.

Also, I wonder if corporations should really push for official privileges through international treaties, which would benefit their competitors as well, and not stick to getting the same advantages through corruption and low-profile agreements instead. But again, Shadowrun setting involves several decades of changes. Megacorporation did not ascend to the top spot before the 2029-2042 period. So maybe it would have been a lot more unofficial before that.

Setting, rules, everything is open to me in principle.



I am trying to remain faithful to the spirit of the setting, and one of the reasons that I'm keen on corporate enclaves is that they sort of herald growing political as well as financial power of megacorporations. They communicate the idea that, far from being crushed by a world gone mad, they found a way to strengthen their hold and expand. It also makes ideological sense, if you think that people in this crazy world might say: "My government is remote and unresponsive, my neighbourhood is a wreck, but the corporation has been there for me. I'm going to live in their arcology because at least I know the dudes at the front desk, and they're extending their daycare into a genuine school run by the best teachers money can buy. And if that means I'm leaving my country behind? Frag 'em. What have they done for me lately?"

I do agree that the point of the setting is to support stories, but one element that you're not really discussing is that the milieu itself, taken as a whole, provides strategic stories, and strategic story elements. Megacorps as global players makes sense if you think that weak and fragmented governments and ruined infrastructure empowers the rise of modern equivalents to the great chartered corporations of the seventeenth through nineteenth centuries.



You're not entirely wrong here, but I think that there are factors that apply to make it more complex. Corporations care a lot about PR. If, as I proposed above, there are zones of extraterritoriality, that probably means that these megacorps have lots of areas where they don't have that sort of coverage. National courts can still pierce the corporate veil under some conditions, and nations can still, if given reason to, wall off the extraterritorial zones or even, with good enough reason, take them back by force. Or withdraw the lease on grounds of ostensible non-compliance, or whatever. If a leasehold on an extraterritorial zone requires some standards of good neighbourliness, then shadowrunners become critically valuable to the corp.

I actually had a game running for a while, CSI:Seattle, where the players ran investigators whose real mission was to prove that the government can do better than Lone Star, and thus help justify pushing Lone Star's contract out and get more money in the hands of the bureaucracy. If you think of that tension between nations and megacorporations, there are lots of stories to tell. Or I think so, anyway.



Some people are replaceable, not all, so that's not completely a settled matter. Their corporate soldiers imprisoned? Probably not a big deal. Scientists? Quite likely a very big deal. Regulatory immunity is certainly an issue, but keeping it once they have it is almost a bigger deal. That situation is ripe for exploitation.



The way I structured it in my alternative approach is that they are all ad-hoc arrangements. Corporations are not globally recognised, but a few of them managed to buy or extort special privileges. Here's a bit I wrote on the corporate court:

On the political front, one other big development arose, and that was the Corporate Court. This was because of the inadequacy of the UN. Just like the League of Nations before it, the UN had proven to be mostly useless at preventing war in the age of rampant insurgencies and widespread populist uprisings, and it also turned out to be quite inadequate to deal with conflicts between corporations that had established extraterritoriality. The UN passed a variety of resolutions and measures decrying the greed of corps, and officially wringing their hands, even while the member states of the UN gave away more and more chunks of jurisdiction where corps offered to solve their problems. The UN refused to recognise the corporations as nations, but nobody could deny their influence, so the corps ended up solving the problem themselves, by creating the Corporate Court.

Contrary to popular belief, the Corporate Court doesn't really have authority to do much beyond mediate differences among its membership. However, its dictates tend to be regarded as precedential by large parts of the planet, so it has outsize influence compared to its actual authority. Another factor is that many contracts state that the Corporate Court is the final court of arbitration, even contracts among parties that are not corporations. This makes the technocrats happy, but the populists hate the corporate court with the sort of passion normally reserved for genocidal despots.

Not to mention exemption from taxes. Extraterritorial corps are obviously not subject to taxation by any country, therefore one a company's income increases over a certain point, it suddenly stops generating ANY revenue to the state.

Which makes the story of the Resource Rush really weird, the US seized land to give it to corps, so that the corps could become large enough to leave a gaping hole in the state budget in return?




[citation needed]

Not entirely related, by I just had an idea about the Seretech decision:

1. The government requires that certain activities to take place only when properly guarded by armed security forces
2. But the government also rules that these requirements for the presence of armed force can only be fulfilled by government employees
3. [sorta, kinda, with a "dem evil gumint" mindset and under special consideration of this briefcase full of cash and that envelope with compromising photos] This is analogous to the government quartering soldiers in one's home
4. In SR's 1999, the Third Amendment was presumably still in place

I was only writing about the extraterritorial privilege. I do not see extraterritoriality as a requirement for corporations to be global players. In one case, the corporation would have both money, technology and law as sources of their power, while in the other they'd only have money and technology, and that may be enough to beat the crap out of law.

I also found it possibly interesting that corporate extraterritoriality may not necessarily be achieved against the will of the government. Obviously, relinquishing authority over a part of their own territory is not something governments would be eager to do. But just like diplomatic privileges stemmed from a consensus between nations to protect their interests abroad, so may arise corporate extraterritoriality.

Consider what is going on nowadays.
- The United States prosecuted foreign banks and oil companies for dealing (in dollars) with Iran and North Korea, and a number of other corporations (and the FIFA) for corruption cases, even if t didn't take place in the US nor involved US citizens. That's actually what "extraterritoriality" originally stands for (applying a country's law outside of its territory). French company Alstom got a deal to get out of a corruption row ight when it agreed to sell its energy division to General Electric.
- Telecommunications companies, from Huawei hardware to Google online services, get pressured by their respective governments to cooperate with the intelligence services (and likely not just for counter-terrorism).
- Defense companies that use components from US or German companies (in some case their own subsidiaries) gets major contracts blocked abroad because of restrictive export laws of those countries.

So I can imagine some governments could actually support corporate extraterritoriality so as to stop other governments from interfering with their economic interests or national security. The idea is quite similar to how the Vienna convention prevent governments from interfering with diplomacy. Diplomats don't get immunity from search and arrest because they deserve it, but because the government could use those as a mean to interfere, by stealing documents or blackmailing diplomats.
Corporate extraterritoriality can be endorsed by government, and even by the general populace, as standing for "those corporations are so important for the world economy and well-being, no government must be able to interfere". Consider for instance what support a campaign to put web history and social networks outside of the range of US intelligence services could get.

As a reminder, in SR canon, what a lot of people consider as the rules of extraterritoriality only are the UCAS rules, which seemingly go far beyond the BRA requirements. Switzerland and Quebec were described as granting extraterritorial privileges only in designated zones under government approved licenses. The Pueblo thoroughsly audits every megacorporation every year (and did revoke Aztechnology).

If having employees (as opposed to deniable shadowrunners) committing a crime is enough to have the extraterritorial privilege lifted, then extraterritoriality might just as well not exist. The very point of it is to ignore the law. Unless extraterritoriality is thought only as an immunity to business regulations. As I wrote above, it can make sense. But it sure would be a lot less impressive to hardened criminal infiltrators.

Again, I was speaking about corporations having extraterritoriality, not about corporations having power. Your story works just as well if Lone Star Security Services is a regular security corporation without extraterritorial privileges.

As far as Shadowrun canon goes, Corporate Download specifically states that extraterritorial megacorporations are expected to pay taxes. They may evade taxes, but so do corporations nowadays.

It worthes remining that extraterritoriality applies to, well, territory. It applies to places. Corporations, as legal persons, have no physical existence. Ares Macrotechnology really is just a registering filling at Michigan state Departement of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs (likely an electronic document anyway). It cannot "move" into one of its extraterritorial building to magically leave the legal system inside which it exists.

This has strong implications that cannot be overlooked. For instance, megacorporations usually are subject to laws that say the President/CEO cannot expropriate shareholders who didn't vote for him or her at whim (also preventing managers of a subsidiaries to secede from their parent companies).

Again, the Resource Rush took place in the first decade or so of the 21st century. There's is little to no clue on what "extraterritoriality" established by the Shiwase decision did, or whom it applied to. It can be hazarded that for some reasons, it did not apply to every 2-employees corporations in the US. It possibly was supposed to only apply to foreign-owned corporations like Shiawase at first. The Resource Rush could then make even more sense if it was intended to be limited to US-only corporations, as an attempt to block extraterritoriality from spreading.

Politicians can also accept less taxes when it is compensated by more campaign funds.

I stand corrected. Minimum rates of pay, maximum works and minimum rest periods and paid annual holidays were specifically excluded, among other things.

http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUri...96L0071:EN:HTML

So in my examples, you can apply Slovenian laws on dismissal (except for pregnant women), retirement schemes, unions and strike actions. Payroll taxes and contributions would also be paid in Slovenia. Less impressive than my original example I know.

How is that different from conventional states gaining territory by buying land from another nation, like for example Alaska? The seller can determine which land is put up for sale (although IRL, many such transfers happened under the threat of military force), and the treaty can include provisions that it needs to be re-negotiated regularly or might even become void under certain conditions.


You have a page ref for that? My copy of Corporate Download is a bit analogue


That's like saying France has no physical existence since it's only a place and not a living person. There is no definite consensus on what constitutes a state, but Ares Macrotechnology meets all commonly cited criteria: A defined territory and citizenship, the monopoly on use of force -- more so than the UCAS, because Ares does its own law enforcement -- and a standing army to defend against outside interference, the recognition by the majority the world's countries which signed the BRAs and the ability to conduct foreign policy with them...


Well, Corporate Download does say that extraterritoriality was initially limited to "certain corporate sites under conditions set down by the Supreme Court". But it also says that corps went extraterritorial "all over the place in the early 00s (p. 21)". According to the official timeline, the Resource Rush happened "rarely a year after the Shiawase Decision", so there must have been some overlap.

A possible explanation would be that faced with losing its control over more and more corps, the US tried to buy the loyalty of the remaining ones with the Amerind reservations. And then the corps broke the promises made concerning that land and declared that it was now their country, can you believe it?

For Corps paying taxes, page 21 in Corporate download says this:

LAW AND POWER
The Corporate Court represents itself as the only
authority by which extraterritorial corporations are bound.
In practice. corps are still expected lo respect national
jurisdictions. pay taxes and otherwise act as good guests
when Inside national borders. However. the Court Is clearly
the only entity with Jurisdiction over all extraterritorial
corps-at the behest, of course, of the Big Ten.


And most of the corps do still want nations around as it deals with a lot of the normal civil day to day stuff that really isn't that profitable and more headache than HR & Accounting wants to deal with.

Land purchases that translate into territorial extensions, would been made under law of international treaties. Such agreement is enforced by both states, cannot be rewritten without their mutual consent (through a new treaty), and litigation can only be brought up to an international arbitrage body (or settled by a war leading to a forced mutual consent for a new treaty...).

An administrative decision by a government to allow corporate or foreign operations inside a designated zone would fall under the country legal system, could be altered at will by the executive or legislative branch of the government, and litigation would be brought to a national jurisdiction.

With a treaty, you're stuck with the terms as they were put down when it was ratified, or hope the Corporate Court will back you. With a national law, the government has the opportunity to alter the rules of the games at any point (though, in Quebec and Switzerland cases, within the limits of the BRA, which is a treaty).

I disagree with the idea that Ares has any "defined territory".

Ares does own lands and buildings bought or leased in accordance to commercial law of the land where they are located. Each would require an international treaty that specifically recognize the land purchase as a territorial grant. Leasing land would not count: neither Guatanamo nor US other bases in Europe, Japan or anywhere else are actual US territory. However, international treaty can only be negotiated by states or international organizations. In the US, the law requires the Congress to ratify the treaty. Nor John Q. Doe, owner a of a building in Detroit downtown, nor the city of Detroit or the state of Michigan can engage in an international treaty with Ares to grant it land.
Canon sources rather points at extraterritoriality applying to all owned or leased land indiscriminately (and never mentions the Congress voting on every acquisition).

Nowadays, a for-profit corporation would not even been considered as an international organization with the ability to enter into a treaty. They can only enter contracts. That would be different in Shadowrun, though I'm not sure that would actually be that cut-and-dry. I think that once the BRA establish the Corporate Court as the obligatory arbitrage body for litigations between a megacorporation and a state, treaties and contracts becomes equivalent. But a legal expert might think otherwise.

The idea of defined citizenship is also debatable, considering that Ares can hire or fire "citizens" at will.

To me, the point of the Business Recognition Accords is, as somewhat suggested by the name, to recognize corporations and contracts as subjects of international laws. Which is wholly different from trying to establish corporations as states and their contracts as treaties. Recognition as states could have a number of nasty side effects. Countries that did not sign the BRA for instance, could recognize them as state nonetheless and only be bound by customary law regarding travel, diplomacy, maritime zone, war... As said above, people, local and national administrations could face restriction in their business relationships with the corporations. Corps have better things to do than trying to join Model UN club ("Come on, it's a lame club, even Liechtenstein was allowed in."). Why submit to the existing international laws when you can establish your own distinct jurisdictional order? And finally, it would defeat the point for the Corporate Court: the AAA prime megacorporations wanted other megacorporations to owe them. States is customary status, and an ill-defined one. The BRA makes it clear that the Corporate Court gets to decide who is a megacorporation and who is not. To simply push for corporations to be considered as states would allow states to recognize who they want.

That is your assumption. The Extraterritorial Business Zones could just as well mean that Quebec does sell/lease land to become part of another state's territory, but only offers land within these zones for sale/lease.

BTW, Switzerland did not sign the BRAs


Objection: If a nation signed a treaty saying that Ares as a state can buy land and such purchases will be considered just as binding as the Alaska Purchase, Ares can do exactly that. The BRAs would be exactly this treaty.


I would contend that Ares' territory is better defined than the territory of most nation states, even between states with friendly relations the exact borders are often unclear.

And the conditions for naturalization or stripping a person of their citizenship are something states decide on their own, most won't kick somebody into statelessness, but some don't give a damn.


So you simply don't, UN membership is neither necessary nor sufficient to be considered a state and abstaining from international conventions is official policy of the real-life USA because ZOMG NWO, last time I checked the USA were still considered a nation. Yeah well, there are those sovereign citizen types, but...

Your idea was to emulate the purchase of Alaska. A purchase is definitive. If you include any provision to revoke it, it's a lease, no matter if it's the result of an international treaty or of a national internal act of law. The Quebec zones d'entreprise are actually described as leases, that the government can revoke at any time. The fact that such lease can be revoked would prevent those land to be considered as a permanent sovereign territory.

Lease would be possible either through an internal act of law or an international treaty with another state or an international organization. If it's an internal act or if it's a treaty who doesn't provisions further detail about revokation, the government of Quebec can change the rules when it wants to about what conditions allow the lease to be revoked. It can decide that it requires a two-third majority at the parliament with a 6 months period of notice just as it can decide that it only requires a strong presumption from a policeman on or off-duty. A treaty could be more elaborate about conditions and procedures for the revocation of the lease. Either way, it's a lease and the land is not going to be considered as permanent sovereign territory.


Yes. I assume megacorporations' facilities are systematically referred to as "extraterritorial enclaves" rather than "territorial enclaves" for a reason, which would be that megacorporations do not have actual territory, in Quebec or elsewhere. Which in turn explain why megacorporations are always referred to as "corporations" rather than "states".

I'm not saying it is impossible to legally write and ratify treaties that establish the kind of situation you describe. I'm saying what has been described in Shadowrun so far doesn't match.

The BRA would not be this treaty. The BRA set provisions for megacorporate status for all the Corporate Court designated corporations. It applies to corporations who had yet to be designated by the court at the time (for example, Wuxing only was in 2045 and Cross Applied Technologies after 2050) and corporations who didn't even exist (like Horizon, created in 2062).

No corporate land purchase or lease can be as binding as Alaska purchase, which was permanent. As said above, a lease defeat the very definition of permanent sovereign territory. And whether it's a lease or a purchase, there is a third party, the Corporate Court, who can revoke a megacorporation's status and extraterritorial privileges, which reverts lands to their natural situation, without changing their ownership or leasing. That fact actually deprives megacorporations of sovereignity.

I wasn't discussing the fact that Ares' territory was well-defined or not. I was discussing the fact the Ares has any territory at all. Ares owns well-defined tracks of land. But as pointed above, Ares authority over them is not permanent and can revert to the local state. There's a reason they are called "extraterritorial enclaves" rather than "territorial enclaves".

As I said, it is more debatable regarding citizenship. To me, the difference is the intent. A state is expected to maintain a permanent population (and genocide and exiles are frowned upon by the rest of the world), while some megacorporations would barely consider employment as a long-term relationship. Some definition of state actually don't even consider "citizens" and refer instead to a population in a territory.

Sorry for the misunderstanding. My mention of the "Model UN club" was intended to be an ironic term for state status at large, the membership in the so-called "Concert of Nations", not just actual membership of the United Nations Organization.

The problem with existing international laws is not what they would prevent such corporations-states from doing, but as I said what it would also other states (including other corporations-states) to do to them: non-recognition, visa requirements, economical sanctions, blockades, wars... with no opportunity to call upon free trades.

Besides, the very fact that megacorporations are expected to pay taxes by states and the Corporate Court alike points toward megacorporations either not considered as states or their presence considered as an economical activity anyway (economical activities by foreign states are subject to taxes, but also deprived from most privileges enjoyed by foreign states).

Whether the transfer of territory is permanent or temporary is irrelevant. The Alaska Purchase could have been limited to certain duration (like Hong Kong or the Panama Canal Zone), it could have included provisions for periodic renewal or conditions under which the treaty expires, for the time the treaty remains in force it wouldn't make a difference. Also notice that one of the few definite things we know about the BRAs is that the site needs to be "continuous and contiguous, recognized and long-term" but not permanent.

Sovereignty includes the ability to enter contractual obligations under conditions you and the other party agree on. If Ares and Quebec agree that Ares gains a certain piece of Quebecois territory under the condition that the lease has to be renewed once a year, or even under stricter conditions, it is their sovereign right to do so. Preventing Ares from accepting these conditions would be an infringement on Ares' sovereignty.

Same for your argument about the CC deciding who is extraterritorial and who is not: The signatories of the BRAs agree that the CC has this power, so be it.


Corporate states go together with another cyberpunk trope: "Company Housing, Company Hymn, Company Grave". You stay with the company for life and when in doubt they'll enforce the "for life" part, that's why extractions take place.


Just like regular states can embargo each other. The Corporate Court would however take a rather dim view of such messing with their free trade, therefore anybody engaging in such ill-advised policies would again face something between a strangely well-funded opposition party and a tungsten rod deorbited right on their head.

The Panama Canal Zone remained an unincorporated territory of the US. The Constitution did not apply (as ruled by SCOTUS in Downes v. Bidwell) and being born in the zone did not grant US citizenship (it requires one of your parent to be also an US citizen). Hong Kong was a British Crown Colony ruled by a governor appointed by the king or queen. No British citizenship for its inhabitants. Both Panama and Hong Kong were considered as distinct from US and UK by their own governments.

Yes. That is the requirements from Shadowrun Business Recognition Accords for a corporate facility to be considered an extraterritorial enclave.

You are basically saying BRA-recognized extraterritorial enclaves should be considered as a state sovereign territory because the BRA recognize them as extraterritorial enclaves.

My argument actually is that the very fact the Corporate Court has that power deprives all megacorporations of any pretense of sovereignty. Quebec is actually not recognizing Ares any sovereignty over a track of land as long as it is bound by the BRA to resume control and jurisdiction over that land as soon as the Corporate Court demands it. It is the very meaning of sovereignty that no third party can interfere. If another state or organization can decide for you in a binding manner, you're not sovereign.

Quebec, as a sovereign nation, can totally recognize Ares Macrotechnology, or the Universal Brotherhood, the Concrete Dreams or the Boston Celtics, as a sovereign state and enter a treaty to grant them a territory under the conditions they agree on. In Ares' cases, Quebec would be infringing the BRA. And possibly piss off the UCAS, since it accounts to recognizing an UCAS-based group as an independent state.

Yes, a state can embargo one another. While existing trade laws prevents them from declaring an embargo on a company. There are, obviously, creative approach to circumvent this, but their reach is limited. They can also refuse and fight off land claim over a part of their territory as self-defense.

Again, what's the point for the Corporate Court and the megacorporations to make such conflicts possible in the first place when they can simply avoid them by just claiming state-like powers without claming the "state" title? Pride and in-your-face attitude?

That's a matter of internal divisions, but my point is that from another nation's POV, those territories were UK/US territory.

China had as much legal say in Hong Kong as they had in London, and sending troops to Hong Kong would technically have been the same as PLA troops marching down Downing Street. Despite the transfer of territory being not permanent, for the time being it was just as independent from China as any other state's territory.


Yes, recognizing something as outside (extra-) your state's territory kinda implies that


That's bullshit, really. If a state can decide matters without outside interference, then this includes the ability to acknowledge another party as the binding decision maker.

Your definition of sovereignty is more akin to extreme isolationism, and accordingly only a few "hermit countries" like North Korea would come close to being "sovereign" under your definition.


If a state or group of states declares an embargo against another state, the result usually is an embargo against companies.

Furthermore, who enforces those trade laws? If there is a body which enforces free trade (let's call it "Corporate Court" ), it can still enforce those rules after those companies became states. If there is none, well, then it does not matter either way.

RE the taxes, here is the interesting part Sendaz quoted again:

"When inside national borders" is the opposite of "extraterritorial", so all this tells us is -- once more -- that diplomatic missions are not comparable to SR extraterritoriality, because when an Ares exec steps outside Ares extraterritorial holdings, he is subject to local law just like everybody else.

From other nations' point of view, the Isthmian Canal Convention the Convention of Chuenpee that established the Panama Canal Zone and the British Crown possession of Hong Kong were international treaties because the United States and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland (along with Panama and China) were recognized as sovereign states for having a defined territory and citizenship and the ability to conduct a foreign policy.

If Panama had granted control to, say, the Compagnie universelle du canal interocénatique de Panama, S.A., a number of other nations', starting with France, where the company was headquartered, and the US, who wanted control of the canal, would have considered the document merely as a commercial contract between the Panamean government and a French company.

Not all territories are sovereign. So a country recognizing a land as not belonging to its sovereign territory is not implying it is recognizing it as the sovereign territory of another country.

That was precisely the case for the Panama Canal Zone and Hong Kong, which were not part of US and UK sovereign territories, nor were they part of Panama and Chinese sovereign territories.

Yes, a sovereign state can totally do that. And that's called relinquinshing sovereignty over a territory: deciding without outside interference that decisions regarding that territory will from now on be subject to outside interferences.

Sovereignty is defined as supreme and absolute power over something. Sovereign states can abandon sovereignty over a territory or a policy. They remain sovereign states as long as they retain sovereignty over some territory and population. It also happens that sovereign states completely relinquishes their sovereignty to become a protectorate or a dependent territory of another state.

From the signing of the BRA, megacorporations had no sovereignty over any of their lands, because all are subjects to the authority of the Corporate Court.

Which requires an indiscriminate embargo against all companies from that country. The point of that rules is to prevent governments from targeting one or several specific companies to support their own national champions.

"When inside national borders" happens to be the opposite of "extraterritorial" for the definition of extraterritoriality that Shadowrun is not using.

A jurisdiction is said to be extraterritorial when a state applies its law outside its territory. For instance, when a US court tries terrorists for the bombing of embassies or warship in another country, it is extraterritoriality. That is not a territorial claim over the land where it took place (though the other country or the defendants may label it as "imperialism").

In Shadowrun, extraterritoriality is used in its other meaning, which applies to diplomatic missions and similar places, and means "inside national borders with an exemption from the national and local jurisdictions".

Note that as far as the quote goes, to "act as good guests" doesn't mean exactly the same thing as "being subject to local law just like everybody else." Diplomats are also expected to act as good guests. But the local government can't do nothing about it if they don't. The very point of that sentence is to point at the fact the Corporate Court is the only authority that can punish the megacorporations if they don't do that.

Yes, because IRL France and the US have not signed a treaty recognizing corporate extraterritoriality. In Shadowrun, they have.



Which would require a fully self-sufficient economy, technology which renders any military attack irrelevant (MAD would not be enough, the other side can still kill you even though they'll die in the process), and foreign policy written by Max Stirner.

Your definition of a sovereign state simply does not exist.



Here is the status Shadowrun Canon attributes to diplomatic missions, verbatim from page 9 of Corporate Download:
Extraterritoriality used to apply only to embassies of foreign countries. If you were in New York but stepped into the British Consulate, you were considered to be in Britain for legal purposes, and subject to British law.

While diplomatic missions in reality have a different status (and embassies are different from consulates), this passage and many similar ones make it clear that when the authors described the status of extraterritorial corps as being like embassies, they were not talking about the actual status embassies have. They were (and still are) talking the status they have according to urban legend, where you step over a line and are in another country.

France and the UCAS have signed a treaty recognizing a privilege of corporate extraterritoriality to apply for the corporations designated by the corporate court whose practical effects were set by their respective legislative and administrative powers.

I do understand your line of reasoning that, once the megacorporations get recognized as having statehood and/or territories, they should kept being recognized as having statehood and/or territories, as well as the capacity to enter international treaties and acquire more territories.
My line of reasoning, is that they would never get recognized as such - and likely not seek it - for the aforementioned reasons.
So at least our respective lines appear to be internally consistent.

I think one could really write a credible 500-pages essay titled The fall of nations: how sovereignty ceased to exist as an effective concept in the aftermath of WW2. I actually think quite a few experts already did something like that. Sovereignty has lost its meaning in a world with large stockpile of strategic weaponry and interdependent international trade. For a given meaning of "meaning". The definition of sovereignty in international laws has not changed the slightest. And it's a large part of the problem that the international system built over those laws cannot acknowledge any change to the definition of sovereignty and statehood - which define whom they apply to - without collapsing.

Sovereign statehood is a legacy existing countries inherited directly or indirectly from 19th century nations-states. It is now effectively impossible for an entity to prove it ought to be recognized as a sovereign state if it does not hail from an existing sovereign state through proper negotiations (see the case of Taiwan or Somaliland).
International laws are a mess and, as I wrote above, I'm not seeing a point for corporations to force their way into that system by getting recognized as states, with a massive number of precautions and exemptions for it not to backfire at them, when they have the clout to establish their own distinct legal order, ruled over by the corporate court.

Who needs strategic weapons? By your definition a state already loses its sovereignty from a minor rebellion in some subjugated province. The government's decision to send soldiers is not entirely their own but created by forces outside their control -> not sovereign.

First, your example is utterly wrong on one point: a government's decision is totally its own. The situation has indeed been created by forces outside their control, starting with gravity, electromagnetic, strong and weak nuclear forces, then all the way down to current day with the continental drift and dinos extinction and all that, and the freewill of people. It can be a constrained decision. It can be a collective decision. But there had to be an alternative choice - even if it is 'do nothing' - for it to be a decision. Otherwise it ought to be called a reaction (which is interestingly enough often used in political commentaries).

If your definition of what a decision is is flawed, no way you can get the definition of sovereignty right. That's the entire point of sovereignty: can anyone outside decide instead of the government? Not just advise them. Not frighten them with threats. Not counter or block their moves. Not punish them afterwards. Narrowing their alternatives until only one remains? Close enough, but the last remaining alternative ought to be 'do nothing' and it's called overthrowing the government, effectively putting an end to sovereignty.

Now why bother with a rebellion? Random John Doe running a red light is defeating the law of the state. But neither of those things touch sovereignty.

Sovereignty is a legal concept in international law. International law first and foremost formally deal with states and their governments and international organizations. A state is more than just its government. The people belongs to the state. In the case of a rebellion or red light runs, those population still are part of the state. As far as other states would be concerned, it is an "internal matter" with one part of the state (the local population) not obeying rules set by another part of the state (the government). And yes, international law can appear to be crazy. Like all other domains of law.

Legality is not expected to magically shape reality by itself, neither it is to let itself been altered by physical reality. Even when it's no longer practically possible to ignore reality, it's still require an act of law to acknowledge such change (like recognizing a separatist province as a new state). Laws and treaties define what is legal. The very purpose of the use of force by a government is to narrow the gap between what is real and what is legal.

You mean a decision like deciding to transfer certain powers to a supranational body?

Actual transfer of powers are fairly rare.

Members of the European Union are expected to willingly implement EU decisions, but that step is still to be taken by national authorities. It regularly happens that one or several member states delay such implementation for years, until they are threatened of a "fine" added to their contribution to the EU budget. A state that wouldn't pay his share of budget (without or without fines) may be kicked out of the end. But at no point can the EU actually force its decisions to come into effect.

United Nations decision are even more routinely ignored. Inside the World Trade Organization, states who fail to abide by their obligations of lowering trade barriers can only be punished by allowing other states to establish sanctions of a similar value. International Criminal Tribunals do request the states to relinquish their power to prosecute criminals and transfer their cases to an international court. But that requirement is not backed by any actual power. Extradition to the court remains a sovereign decision, and so would be a trial by a national jurisdiction for those crime (the "permanent" International Criminal Tribunal provisions actually only allow prosecution for cases in which no state is "willing" and "able" to prosecute, thus only infringing on a state sovereign right to not prosecute - and it still cannot force extradition).

In all of those cases, governments are willingly submitting to treaties and subsequent requests. At no point does a civil servant, a judge, a policeman or a soldier in exercise within its borders is going to take order from a foreign authority. If that was to happen, then yes, the state sovereignty could be put into question.