After summarizing the book’s main arguments, this chapter clarifies the empirical scope of the project by briefly explaining transnational US commercial law, foreign sovereign immunity, and the act of state doctrine. It then introduces the concept of “judicial territory,” before offering a brief sketch of the timeline of the expansion of US judicial territory and its changing relationship to US empire and global capitalism. These large-scale dynamics, the chapter goes on to explain, emerge from the iterative redefinition of key legal dichotomies, especially the public/private, political/legal, and foreign/domestic distinctions. These technicalities, in turn, are central to the way judicial expansion has reshaped territorial sovereignty and helped institutionalize a neoliberal understanding of the economy. The chapter concludes with some comments on reading and interpreting common law, before providing a brief outline of the rest of the book.