Does Australia have the same rules regarding succession to the throne as the United Kingdom? It was pointed out that the Queen of the United Kingdom is also the Head of State in Australia (and other Commonwealth countries), but she has the separate title of The Queen of Australia. I always thought she was The Queen of the United Kingdom everywhere. This could mean that, they could have different laws of succession than the United Kingdom does. For example, Australia could perhaps allow Catholics to be their Head of State. The UK also recently changed the law regarding first born child's sex; did Australia (and all the other Commonwealth countries) change this too? Or do I have a misunderstanding, and they all just use the same succession rules by default?
It is certainly true that different states who share a Head of State can have different succession rules. Thus William IV of the United Kingdom was also King of Hannover. The UK allowed female succession, so Victoria was Queen of the United Kingdom; Hannover didn't, so he was succeeded by Ernest Augustus there. At the moment, all the Commonwealth Realms of which Elizabeth is Head of State have the same rules of succession. They all changed the rules regarding whether a first-born girl would be heir apparent together. They could decide to have different rules of succession, but they probably won't.
The general rule is that the ability to have a valid divorce has nothing to do with where the marriage was entered into, or the citizenship of the parties. Usually, any jurisdiction with sufficient contacts with either member of the couple has jurisdiction to enter a divorce. Hence, generally, people get divorced in the place that they live. The problem in this scenario is step 5. I think that it is highly likely that the U.S. Embassy is simply wrong, unless there is some serious irregularity in step 4. An annulment after four years of marriage, as opposed to a divorce, is highly irregular and would not be allowed in the vast majority of jurisdictions. But, maybe there are facts and circumstances that make it otherwise. This fact pattern, while it on one hand sounds like a "for a friend" question based on real facts, also sounds like some important details that may be outcome determinative have been omitted.
What you're asking about is extraterritorial jurisdiction, and it will depend on the country and crime(s) involved. As an example, under Australian law, it is a crime to engage in sexual activities with minors barring specific exemptions, which are not relevant to this example. There are countries where the age of majority is less than that in Australia. If you were to travel to this country, you are not necessarily committing a crime there. However, Australia's sex tourism laws make it a crime to do this anywhere in the world. This is enacted (I believe) under the foreign affairs power of the Commonwealth Government. It will largely depend on the legal system of your country, as to whether laws have extraterritorial effect. In general, however, laws do not have extraterritorial effect unless explicitly stated.
The earliest mention of the principle that I can find is in Rolston v Secretary of State for Northern Ireland [1975] NI 195, where the matter of compensation for the widow of a police officer murdered in Northern Ireland arose. I am sure there are earlier cases that express the same principle in different terms, however. It is a broad principle that applies to most areas of civil law, and I cannot find an original source for it. I imagine that it is simply &quot;received wisdom&quot; that has been repeated long enough to become a cornerstone of the law of restitution in England and Wales. There is currently no statutory basis for the principle so I cannot cite any relevant Acts of Parliament either.
I haven't found any cases where this defence has worked. I strongly suspect that that's because it never has. Every piece of advice I've read on this unsurprisingly suggests you'd be a fool to attempt to rely on this defence in court, including some cases in which defendants have attempted to rely on it and have failed. There are a couple of Freedom of Information requests to the government which state very clearly that it won't work: https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/statute_law_4 https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/consent_of_the_governed The last link is particularly clear on the matter: every citizen of the UK tacitly consents to be governed, according to Blackstone. And this one makes it even clearer: https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/18097/response/56511/attach/html/3/TO%20255452%20TO09%205866.doc.html Under the doctrine of Parliamentary Sovereignty, Acts of Parliament override common law. So it simply wouldn't be possible to argue that you choose to live under the common law alone; no court in the land would allow it, as it's a cornerstone of our legal system that Parliament is sovereign, and therefore that statutes enacted by Parliament will 'trump' the common law. Parliament derives its sovereignty from the fact that the current government is elected and therefore represents the citizens of the UK, and for this reason, Acts of Parliament take priority over case law. On that basis, it wouldn't be possible for a citizen to argue that they choose not to abide by statute: their consent is tacitly assumed. Based on all the above, then, I would say no: the 'common law' defence will never hold water if relied on in court.
Why do you expect different courts to determine different laws in the same way? The Czech and UK laws that implement the GDPR are necessary different because they are the products of different legislative and legal traditions and are written in different languages. The differences may be minor but they will exist. Particular cases will have different factual and legal nuances and be interpreted by different courts with very different judicial traditions. Czech courts set no precedents in UK courts and vice-versa. It’s no surprise that there will be different outcomes. Even jurisdictions with much closer legal traditions like US Federal Circuit Courts and Australian states often have divergent precedents on similar (or the same) legislation.
The law does have examples They are called “judgements” Every case decided by a court is an example, in common law jurisdictions at least. When those cases are decided by an superior court they become precedents - binding “examples” on courts in their hierarchy and persuasive “examples” on other courts. When you go to a lawyer for advice, she doesn’t just parrot back the statute, she looks at the precedents and decides whether the case decided by the House of Lords in 1848 or the High Court of Australia in 1912 more closely matches your situation. Also, statute law often has examples written into them Statues exist in hierarchies, Constitution, Acts, Regulations, Departmental Policies etc. and the lower you go the more specific the law is and the more likely it is to have examples. For example, this answer I wrote for another question quotes examples from the new-south-wales Evidence Act.
It does not need to be expressly defined in statute in order to be legally effective. Courts have no trouble interpreting ordinary words used in their conventional way. And there is no other definition that could work instead, considering the full body of law that (1) intends to apply to the whole of the United Kingdom, (2) often distinguishes between &quot;Great Britain&quot; and &quot;Northern Ireland&quot;, (3) often distinguishes between &quot;England&quot;, &quot;Wales&quot;, &quot;Scotland&quot; and &quot;Northern Ireland&quot;, (4) treats &quot;Great Britain&quot; as synonymous with England, Wales and Scotland, and (5) often uses &quot;Great Britain&quot; without further ceremony, as if it's a term that doesn't need to be explained. It is helpful that legislation (at least in the modern era) is consistent about the view that &quot;Great Britain&quot; refers precisely to England, Wales and Scotland all together. By virtue of the Interpretation Act 1978, &quot;United Kingdom&quot; means Great Britain and Northern Ireland. from which we may deduce immediately that Great Britain means the United Kingdom except for Northern Ireland. There is no sibling '&quot;Great Britain&quot; means...' clause, but construing it any other way than the normal meaning would not work. From the combined definitions of &quot;England&quot;, &quot;Wales&quot;, &quot;British Islands&quot;, etc. - which by reference, also deal with such historically doubtful areas as Berwick and Monmouthshire - there is no other way to interpret the term &quot;Great Britain&quot; without distorting the required meaning of &quot;United Kingdom&quot;. Including too much or too little in &quot;Great Britain&quot; would give the wrong result, in particular for statutory extent clauses that refer to the whole United Kingdom and ought not to accidentally leave out Cornwall or include Hanover. We do not need to go as far as the Acts of Union, which is lucky since that would entangle us in concerns about whether &quot;England&quot; includes &quot;Wales&quot;, or other historical anomalies that are not relevant in current law. I would treat the Acts of Union as giving added force to the conventional meaning, rather than being the source of that meaning, since there are uses of the term which seem to be more about Great Britain considered as a place than the political entity. For example, the Food Safety Act 1990 s.18(3) talks about &quot;any food which has not previously been used for human consumption in Great Britain&quot;, which seems to talk more about the food culture of the place, even predating the Acts of Union, than about the Kingdom of Great Britain or its successors. The term &quot;Great Britain&quot; is frequently used in statutes in the customary way. For example, The Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000 s.28 creates a &quot;Great Britain register&quot; and a &quot;Northern Ireland register&quot; of political parties, and s.38(1)(3)(b) provides for the &quot;Great Britain register&quot; to cover precisely England, Scotland and Wales. The Northern Ireland Act 1998 s.87 is about provisions of UK social security law that operate differently in Great Britain and Northern Ireland. The Electricity Act 1989 (as amended) provides for the issue of &quot;GB certificates&quot; as opposed to &quot;NI certificates&quot;, and also defines &quot;the relevant part of Great Britain&quot; as meaning either &quot;England and Wales&quot; or &quot;Scotland&quot; (s.32M(1)). The Agriculture Act 2020 s.35 provides for a &quot;red meat levy&quot; to be paid between &quot;one country in Great Britain&quot; and &quot;another such country&quot;, and goes on in 35(8) to list the levy bodies for England, Scotland and Wales. So all of this points to the same common meaning as in everyday life. In court, for example, Lord Hoffman in Serco v Lawson [2006] UKHL 3 had to consider the Employment Rights Act 1996 s.196, since repealed, which governed &quot;work wholly or mainly outside Great Britain&quot;. (And by the way, in 196(1)(b) is a listing of &quot;England and Wales&quot; and &quot;Scotland&quot; as the two possible bodies of law relating to Great Britain.) In his judgement, he says: It is true that section 244(1) says that the Act &quot;extends&quot; to England and Wales and Scotland (&quot;Great Britain&quot;). But that means only that it forms part of the law of Great Britain and does not form part of the law of any other territory (like Northern Ireland or the Channel Islands) for which Parliament could have legislated. That is, he does not find it difficult to gloss the extent provision in 244(1), which doesn't include the exact words &quot;Great Britain&quot;, as actually referring to Great Britain. Other legislation refers to &quot;Great Britain&quot; as a locale, like the Wild Animals in Circuses Act 2019 which talks about &quot;an animal of a kind which is not commonly domesticated in Great Britain&quot;. This is a straightforward reference to the kind of activities typically going on in that location, treating it as the island(s) and not the political entity. The expression does not include the territorial sea, by default; some statutes include it, like the Gas Act 1986 s.5(9) which says: For the purposes of this section a place is within the jurisdiction of Great Britain if it is in Great Britain, in the territorial sea adjacent to Great Britain or in an area designated under section 1(7) of the Continental Shelf Act 1964. There are several other instances of particular statutes defining &quot;Great Britain&quot; to include adjacent waters, but they do not define the core concept of Great Britain otherwise. They do not need to.