Please read the following material carefully and write down your comment on it. Your comment should not be short than 1000 words. Your comment can be written in Chinese or English, meanwhile you can get the additional 5 score for your final mark if you choose English. The raison d’être of private international law is the existence in the world of a number of separate municipal systems of law—a number of separate legal units—that differ greatly from each other in the rules by which they regulate the various legal relations arising in daily life. Courts in one country must frequently take account of some rule of law that exists in another. A sovereign is supreme within his own territory and, according to the universal maxim of jurisprudence, he has exclusive jurisdiction over everybody and everything within that territory and over every transaction that is effected there. He can, if he chooses, refuse to consider any law but his own. Although the adoption of this policy of indifference might have been common enough in other ages, it is impracticable in the modern civilized world. Consequently, nations have long found that they cannot, by sheltering behind the principle of territorial sovereignty, afford to disregard foreign rules of law merely because they happen to be different from their own internal system of law. Moreover, as will be shown later, it is no derogation of sovereignty to take account of foreign law. The recognition of a foreign law in a case containing a foreign element may be necessary for at least two reasons. In the first place, the invariable application of the law of the forum, i.e. the local law of the place where the court is situated, would often lead to gross injustice. Suppose that a person engaged in English litigation is required to prove that she is the lawful widow of a man who has just died, the marriage having taken place abroad many years ago. The marriage ceremony, though regular according to the law of the place where it was performed, did not perhaps satisfy the formal requirements of English law, but nevertheless to apply the English Marriage Act 1949 to such a union, and thereby to deny that the couple were man and wife, would be nothing but a travesty of justice. Secondly, if the court is to carry out in a rational manner the policy to which it is now committed—that of entertaining actions in respect of foreign claims—it must, in the nature of things, take account of the relevant foreign law or laws. A claimant, for instance, seeks damages for breach of a contract that was both made and to be performed in France. Under the existing practice the court is prepared to create and to enforce in his favour, if he substantiates his case, an English right corresponding as nearly as possible to that which he claims. However, neither the nature nor the extent of the relief to which he is rightly entitled nor, indeed, whether he is entitled to any relief can be determined if the law of France is disregarded. This is because to consider English law alone might reverse the legal obligations of the parties as fixed by the law to which their transaction, both in fact and by intention, was originally subjected. A promise, for instance, made by an Englishman in Italy and to be performed there, if valid and enforceable by Italian law, would not be held void by an English court merely because it was unsupported by consideration.
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