ABSTRACT
Extradition is an age-old institution in international law. Its original purpose was to mitigate an adverse effect of territoriality, namely the opportunity for wrongdoers to find sanctuary in foreign jurisdictions, by authorizing their surrender under the jurisdiction of the prosecuting state (Chauvy 1981; Stanbrook and Stanbrook 2000: 3-18). As long as extradition is a matter of comity among states, there is no inherent tension between extradition and national sovereignty. As soon as there is an obligation to extradite, however, this militates against the absolutist idea that a government should be free to decide whether or not to surrender a person subject to its territorial jurisdiction. For a long time, an automatic obligation to surrender criminal suspects or convicts to the criminal jurisdiction of other states was therefore considered to be irreconcilable with the traditional role of the Leviathan as the final arbiter of jurisdiction on its own territory.
