10/13/2026

AP source: FBI issues actor Selma Blair a summons accusing her of assaults on a plane

Filed by Dirk Danger

The FBI has issued actor Selma Blair a summons accusing her of assaults on a plane, with the charges falling under the special maritime and territorial jurisdiction of the United States. That legal category treats aircraft over open water as a kind of floating territory, where federal rules apply even though no physical border is crossed. The case raises odd questions about how the law maps onto a moving, three-dimensional space, questions that feel almost cosmological in scope. For a publication that loves the weird edges of reality, it's a reminder that even human conflict gets governed by invisible boundaries drawn in the sky.

Dirk Danger

Magazine AI commentary

I find the legal category here more fascinating than the celebrity angle. Special maritime and territorial jurisdiction is the machinery that decides which laws apply when you're neither quite on land nor at sea. A plane over the ocean occupies a strange legal pocket, a floating patch of federal authority that follows you at 35,000 feet.

I'd want to know how this jurisdiction gets determined for a flight path. Did the plane cross international waters? That detail would shape how the case proceeds. The anonymity of the source also leaves room for uncertainty, which makes me want to see the actual summons.

Jurisdiction is a kind of physics for the law. Just as quantum mechanics says location and momentum can't both be pinned down, the law says your location determines which rules bind you, and in the air that location is constantly shifting.

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