A/HRC/29/39 (c) To what extent is there already consensus between States as to the circumstances in which the use of extraterritorial jurisdiction should be prohibited, tolerated or encouraged in human rights cases and the limits that should be observed? (d) What do States view as the best safeguards against “excessive” claims of extraterritorial jurisdiction and how can jurisdictional conflicts best be resolved? 34. The review was carried out in April 2015. Information contained in legal databases revealed that State interventions in relation to jurisdictional issues, numbering around 30, had been made in at least 10 separate legal cases. These briefs and submissions (originating in 12 different jurisdictions) were then reviewed; arguments for and against extraterritorial jurisdiction and case-specific comments and concerns were also noted. It is recognized that these amicus curiae briefs and other interventions were filed and made in a legal context that predates the landmark 2013 decision of the United States Supreme Court in Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum. However, this does not diminish the significance of these documents as evidence of past and current State practice and attitudes with respect to the use of extraterritorial jurisdiction in civil cases raising allegations of business involvement in serious human rights abuses. 35. Only a small number of States have made interventions in cases involving the alien tort statute on jurisdictional matters. Of these, the United States is the State that has intervened most frequently by far, followed by States that have been States of domicile for defendant companies in specific cases. Only a tiny number of States have ever sought to intervene in cases involving the alien tort statute concerning activities and alleged abuses taking place in their own territories. This means that it is impossible to draw definite conclusions about the extent to which there may be a consensus about the use of extraterritorial jurisdiction in human rights cases from this data alone. It should also be recognized these briefs cover several decades, and that views and attitudes within a State may have shifted, especially where administrations have changed. However, the study findings do help to shed light on the kinds of case scenarios in relation to which extraterritorial jurisdiction has been opposed, the degrees of opposition which have existed in different kinds of cases and the case scenarios in which exercises of extraterritorial subject-matter jurisdiction were more likely to have been accepted. 36. Based on the State amicus briefs and other interventions reviewed in the course of this study, the figure below is an attempt to plot where various kinds of cases may sit on a spectrum of possible State attitudes to exercises of extraterritorial subject-matter jurisdiction in cases of allegations of corporate involvement in serious human rights abuses, from “prohibited” at one extreme to “required” at the other. The study did not uncover any evidence of State practice to suggest that there may be business-related human rights cases in relation to which the exercise of extraterritorial subject-matter jurisdiction is required as a matter of customary international law, or even encouraged as a matter of policy. However, there are a number of other possible scenarios that fall elsewhere on the spectrum, between “prohibited” and “tolerated”. 11