[Ws2-jurisdiction] Issue: US's courts' judicial writ over all aspects of ICANN

[parminder]

Issue

As a US based entity, ICANN is subject to full range of US laws. Almost
any US court can take up for its judicial consideration whether ICANN
works within each of such applicable law or not. This brings up a high
likelihood that any time in the future ICANN will have to change under
US courts' directions its actions taken in pursuance of its global
governance function of developing global DNS related policies and
implementing them. This is obviously undemocratic and inappropriate that
one country's law and its court decide what a global governance body
like ICANN will or will not do.

Further, it is not only a matter of a court actually finding legal fault
with an ICANN action and forcing to change it. Knowing that ICANN is
subject to the full range of US public law, ICANN would always take care
to keep its actions with them (as it has no doubt done till now). This
is what is called as the "chilling effect
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chilling_effect>". This phenomenon which
is already in existence with ICANN's actions, since its inception, is
undemocratic and illegitimate from the point of view of the non US
people, since they did not participate in making the US laws, and the
laws they may have actually developed may even be in contradiction to US
law on a particular subject. This phenomenon therefore leads to denial
of democratic rights to non US citizens.

Solution:

Any given court would not heed to any pleadings about ICANN being
special as a global governance organisation, and should be treated as
such. Neither is the court legally supposed to do, under the US
constitution and laws. The only solution there is a general immunity
under the US International Organisations Immunities Act, with proper
customisation and exceptions for ICANN to enable to be able to perform
its organisational activities from within the US. The chief exception I
understand would be the application of California non profit law. 



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