When courts are faced with questions regarding the territorial scope and regulatory reach of domestic legislation, they engage with complex political issues. These extend beyond traditional conceptions of state sovereignty and non-intervention on which the functioning of courts is typically based. This paper examines the role of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) in reviewing the extraterritorial reach of EU law, which enables novel examinations of courts as surrogate fora for political processes. The paper focuses on the policy areas of environmental and animal welfare law. It analyses cases in which the CJEU engaged with extraterritoriality, both in reviewing the legality of EU legislation and in interpreting its exact scope. Such cases blur the distinction between the internal and external aspects of the EU legal order and demonstrate the changing role of courts in an increasingly globalised and inter-connected world.