Reply #24: You certainly are hung up

[Coyote_Bandit]

on the fact that another country just might have different laws.

I have not disputed that. Quite the opposite actually. I detailed the difficulties of an acquaintance, a French citizen, who was unable to have a church wedding ceremony in Paris because of a technicality regarding the manner in which the French statutes are interpreted and applied. Technically he complied with all the requirements of the French statutes. It was the application of those statutes that was the problem. That is a problem one would not necessarily anticipate based on a reading of a statute. It is a matter that can be either interpretative or procedural or some combination of the two.

I have pointed out that sometimes there are problems discovering and understanding the technicalities of foreign legal requirements. Attorneys generally contract foreign counsel to advise them regarding foreign law. I have pointed out that folks often lose their objectivity when it comes to their own matters. You condemn TB Guy for being less than perfect in his own affairs and yet you find legal conclusions based on a Google search and a phone call acceptable.

You refuse to recognize the existence of interpretative and procedural issues and challenges regarding foreign laws. That refusal is tantamount to suggesting that the color blue is universally agreed to have a single recognized tint, tone and shade. Meanwhile, some folks understand blue to mean something closer to navy while others understand it to refer to the color of a clear afternoon sky. Procedurally, tint, tones and shades of blue are derived and mixed differently depending on whether an artist is using additive or subtractive color theory. Not everyone agrees that the primary colors are red, yellow and blue. In the absence of an interpretative context, “blue” is pretty much meaningless. Same is true of words in statutes.

Remind me again that other countries have their own legal requirements that I can easily identify via Google search and confirm through a phone call to the local embassy.