NAPOLITANO

these seizures were repellent, the crimes — violence against individuals or large-scale distribution of dangerous drugs — were crimes everywhere, and the harm caused by them was palpable.

Until now.

Now Swiss bankers who have followed and respected Swiss

banking laws — which honor the privacy of customers, no matter who they are — and who have never caused harm to American people or property are on trial in the U.S.

The charges? Violating U.S. banking laws by failing to report suspicious transactions to U.S. banking regulators. And for those “pretended offenses,” these bankers have been transported “beyond

Seas” for trial.

The Department of Justice is unable to point to any harm caused by these so-called offenses, but federal judges, just as they did in the Reagan era, are accepting the DOJ argument of universal jurisdiction — that somehow American federal courts can try anyone, no matter where a person is said to have committed a crime, as long as the defendant is physically

in the courtroom.

But this violates the Declaration of Independence and Constitution’s first principles, and it subjects American bankers and government officials to the same pretended universal jurisdiction of foreign courts. Indeed, a court in Spain has indicted former President George W. Bush and former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld for alleged war crimes committed

in Afghanistan.

Why should Bush and Rumsfeld answer to Spain for events that allegedly occurred in Afghanistan? Why should Swiss bankers answer to the U.S. when they didn’t violate Swiss law?

This is all about power and the fiction of universal jurisdiction — a fiction the Framers thought they had buried. It needs to be buried again.