Rights of Nationals of the United States of America in Morocco (France v. United States)

In the early twentieth century, Morocco was a protectorate under the joint colonial control of France (plaintiff) and Spain. Protests by the United States (defendant) against discriminatory French Moroccan tariffs prompted France to petition the International Court of Justice (ICJ) for declaratory judgments against the US on several Morocco-related issues, including the interpretation of most-favored-nation (MFN) and limited-consular-jurisdiction clauses in the 1836 treaty between Morocco and the US. Limited consular jurisdiction empowered US consuls to resolve disputes arising between US expatriates living in Morocco. Full consular jurisdiction would add consular power to resolve disputes between Moroccan plaintiffs and US-expatriate defendants. The US claimed that, as an MFN, the US was entitled to exercise the same full consular jurisdiction that the United Kingdom exercised pursuant to Morocco’s 1856 treaty with the UK. The US argued that: (1) the US right to exercise full jurisdiction survived the UK’s 1937 renunciation of full jurisdiction as it applied to French Morocco, (2) the UK’s retention of full 1856-treaty rights in Spanish Morocco kept alive a US claim rooted in those UK rights, (3) 1880 and 1906 treaties effectively affirmed then-existing full-jurisdiction rights, and (4) customary international law entitled the US to continue exercising full jurisdiction as the US had consistently done despite the UK’s 1937 renunciation and ongoing Franco-American negotiations on the topic.