Whether Section 929P(b)'s jurisdictional amendments conferred substantive extraterritorial reach upon Sections 10(b) and 17(a) in SEC enforcement actions and in federal criminal prosecutions

QUESTION PRESENTED In Morrison v. National Australia Bank Ltd., 561 USS. 247 (2010), the Court held that the extraterritorial reach of Section 10(b) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 was a question of the substantive scope of that statute. 561 U.S. at 254. In so holding, the Court expressly rejected the notion that extraterritorial application of a statute is a question of a federal court’s subject-matter jurisdiction. Jbid. Soon thereafter, Section 929P(b) of the Dodd-Frank Act amended the provisions of the Securities Act of 1933 and the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 that govern the subject-matter jurisdiction of the district courts to provide that the “district courts of the United States * * * shall have jurisdiction of an action or proceeding brought or instituted by the Commission or the United States * * * involving” certain domestic “conduct” or “effect[s].” Section 929P(b) did not amend or alter the extraterritorial reach of the substantive regulatory provisions of the securities laws, including Section 10(b) of the Exchange Act and Section 17(a) of the Securities Act. The question presented is: Whether Section 929P(b)’s jurisdictional amendments conferred substantive extraterritorial reach upon Sections 10(b) and 17(a) in SEC enforcement actions and in federal criminal prosecutions. (1)