of guardians is considered as strictly local; they can exercise control neither over the person, personal property, nor real property of wards, in other states.*

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VI. Acts having a legal validity are everywhere reduced to certain forms; a certain number of witnesses Forms of legal is required to prove them; a certain magistrate acts. to authenticate them. Now if the law of every state demanded that a document, to be legal, should have the form required within its jurisdiction, there would be endless embarrassment, and sometimes legal acts could not be performed at all. Thus, a Prussian cannot make a will when at home without the intervention of a court, while in France the formalities of wills belong to notaries alone. Hence, if Prussia insisted that her legal forms should be necessary in all wills wherever made, a Prussian stranger in France could not make one, to the great detriment, it might be, of his family. The general rule, therefore, that has been adopted is that locus regit actum, or that the law and usage of the place where a legal act is performed, determines its validity, that is, that an act which is authentic in its own place is so everywhere. Any other rule would call in each place for the knowledge of the formalities necessary in every place. It is to be assumed that the laws of all civilized countries, however they may differ from each other, aim to give the due solemnity and certainty to legal acts and documents. This rule has little application within the province of personal status and of rights to things. Its importance consists in its application to obligations, testaments, and marriages.

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lowed to stran

The comity of nations allows to strangers a free use of the courts of each other's country. In France, how- Use of courts al ever, a foreigner bringing a suit is obliged to fur- gers. nish security that the costs of suit will be satisfied; while the native Frenchman is not obliged to do this. The same rule * Story, §§ 499, 504.

prevails in some other countries on the continent. But to this rule, there are in France two exceptions apart from exemptions by treaty; one in commercial transactions; the other where the foreign demandant possesses in the realm immovables of sufficient value to pay expenses. The same rule holds in England, where the foreigner himself is not actually in the country.

In most countries, free use of the courts is given to strangers not domiciled, if they have occasion to bring suits in personam* against such other strangers. In France, however, this humane provision does not exist except in the case of foreign merchants, and where treaties provide for such protection. The doctrine is that foreigners in such complaints must invoke the aid of their own courts or that of the defendant party.

eigners.

In suits against foreigners the practice of nations differs.. Suits against for. In countries under Roman law, the maxim, actor sequitur forum rei, generally prevails; that is, the plaintiff must sue in the court of the defendant's domicil. In countries under English law, however, personal actions "may be brought in the domestic forum, whoever may be the parties and wherever the cause of action may originate." "All real and possessory actions must be brought in the place where the property lies.+" The rule embodied in the maxim abovementioned admits of exceptions where it is followed. Thus, in France, a Frenchman may summon a foreigner, even one not resident in France, before the French tribunals for the fulfil ment of obligations by him contracted towards the Frenchman, whether within or without the realm.‡

Proofs.

The maxim locus regit actum will imply that testimony in writing, and all documents, in the form proper at any place, ought to be received as valid in all other courts. The same law-maxim, perhaps, may be used to answer the enquiry what weight is to be given to parol evidence, in regard to facts occurring abroad, by the courts of countries where such evidence is not usually admissible. As testimony by witnesses is a satisfactory form of proof in the foreign country in regard to a given fact, why should it not be Story, §§ 542, 543 + Wheaton, II. 2, § 20. + Fœlix, I. §§ 169-186.

received as such in other countries where the same facts come before the courts? Such, indeed, is the opinion generally adopted.*

Many countries aid one another's judicial proceedings by consenting that their judges may accept rogatory Rogatory commis commissions, or act as agents of foreign courts for sions. the purpose of examining witnesses or otherwise ascertaining facts. These are acts of reciprocal comity, which cannot extend to cases where the interrogation would be prejudicial to public or private rights. Such commissions are not in vogue in England and the United States, says Fœlix, where, consequently, if foreign testimony is to be taken, some agent of the court, who has no power to compel witnesses to testify, is deputed to take the evidence in the foreign country.†

§ 77.

The judgment of a court and the execution of it are acts of sovereignty. Comity alone gives them effect Effect of foreign out of the country where they originate. Many judgments. writers on international law maintain that a definitive decision by a competent court in a foreign country, under due forms of law, and where opportunity of appeal is allowed, ought to stand and receive its execution in any other country, as much as the decisions of its own tribunals, provided, however, that such judgment contain nothing contrary to the interests or rights of the foreign country. This principle has passed in a degree into the laws and practice of the European states. Some of them have adopted in this respect the rule of reciprocity. France, on the other hand, takes ground which greatly restricts the effects of foreign judgments within her borders. An ordinance of 1629, still in force, prescribes, that judgments rendered in foreign sovereignties, shall have no execution in France, and that subjects of the French king, against whom they are rendered, may bring their cases up anew for revision before the tribunals of their own country. According to M. Fœlix, this law does not prevent judgments rendered against a Felix, I. § 241.

* Fœlix, I. § 233

stranger from being executed in France, if judged not inconsistent with the rights and interests of the nation. England again takes a third position. He who has obtained a foreign judgment in his favor, brings before the court a claim to the thing adjudged to him. The foreign judgment is regarded as a decisive proof of the justice of the claim, unless some irregularity can be shown by the opposite party.*

in a foreign coun

try.

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Each nation has a right to try and punish according to its Crimes committed Own laws crimes committed on its soil, whoever may be the perpetrator. But some nations extend the operation of their laws, so as to reach crimes committed by their subjects upon foreign territory. In this procedure municipal law only is concerned, and not international; and, as might be supposed, laws greatly differ in their provisions. (1.) One group of states, including many of the German states, some of the Swiss cantons, Naples, Portugal, Russia, and Norway, punish all offences of their subjects, committed in foreign parts, whether against themselves, their subjects, or foreigners, and this not in accordance with foreign but with domestic criminal law. (2.) At the opposite extreme stand Great Britain, the United States and France, which, on the principle that criminal law is territorial, refrain from visiting with penalty crimes of their subjects committed abroad. Yet they do not adhere to this rule with absolute rigor. The two former try and punish slave-trading carried on by their subjects in foreign vessels, and crimes perpetrated in foreign countries where exterritorial jurisdiction is conceded to them. Great Britain punishes high treason, murder, homicide, bigamy, illegal acts of British crews, and crimes perpetrated in certain barbarous countries. France notices no crimes of Frenchmen against foreigners, nor "délits" of one Frenchman against another on foreign soil; nor "crimes" of Frenchman against Frenchman except on complaint of the injured party; but punishes offences against the safety of France, together

* Fœlix II. § 347–404, esp. § 357. But comp. Story, § 603–607.

with counterfeiting its seal, coins, and paper money. (3.) Certain states, as Belgium, Holland, Sardinia, Darmstadt, punish foreign crimes of their subjects against the state or their fellowsubjects, but only certain crimes of such subjects in foreign parts against foreigners. The two former call to account only for grave crimes, as murder, arson, rape, forgery;-Belgium adopting the same standard which she applies to her treaties relating to the extradition of fugitive foreigners. Sardinia makes punishable all "crimes" of its subjects abroad, but "délits" are subject to the rule of reciprocity. The scale of punishment also is in all cases one degree less than that of the same offences committed at home. (4.) Wurtemberg makes the fact of punishment, (in a milder former than for similar crimes at home,) dependent on the questions whether the given offence has a penalty affixed to it by the laws of the foreign state where it took place, and whether it would be punishable there, if committed against Wurtemberg.

The same difference of practice exists in the case of crimes committed by foreigners in a foreign country against a state or one of its subjects, who are afterwards found by the injured state within its borders. England and the United States seem not to refuse the right of asylum, even in such cases. France punishes public crimes only, and such as Frenchmen would be liable for, if committed abroad. (See this § above.) So Belgium and Sardinia, but the latter state also, in the case of wrongs done to the individual Sardinian, first makes an offer of delivering up the offending foreigner to the forum delicti, and if this is declined, then gives the case over to its own courts. Many states, again, act on the principle that it is as right to punish a foreigner as a subject for foreign crimes against themselves or their subjects.

Nearly all states consider foreign crimes, against foreign states or their subjects, as beyond their jurisdiction. A few refuse sojourn on their soil to such foreign wrong doers. A few go so far as to punish even here, in case the party most nearly concerned neglects to take up the matter. Thus Aus