Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 32.djvu/854

818 8i8 HARVARD LAW REVIEW If the English law would recognize the vaHdity of foreign decrees of nullity of marriage, pronounced under the conditions under which an English court would take jurisdiction, some general doctrine of the requisites for a nullity suit might be said to be estabUshed. But in the important case of Ogden v. Ogden^'^ the Court of Appeals held that a decree of a French court annulling a marriage in England between a Frenchman and an Englishwoman was not entitled to recognition in England, and the woman's second marriage, entered into after the French decree, was rendered bigamous. But here the French court had as much basis for jurisdiction as did the court in Bater v. Bater, or the Irish court in Johnson v. Cook. In Simonin v. Mallac^^ a previous French decree of nullity was like- wise disregarded. The citations in cases and texts go back to Sir William Scott's judgment in the case of Sinclair v. Sinclair in 1798.^^ To a suit by a wife the husband set up a decree of nullity of marriage, pronounced in Brussels on proceedings instituted by him. The marriage had taken place in Paris. Said the court: "A sentence of nullity of marriage ... in the country where it was solemnized would carry with it great authority in this country; but I am not prepared to say, that a judgment of a third country, on the validity of a marriage not within its territories, nor had between subjects of that country, would be universally binding." This seems entirely right — but it does not say, as Sir Gorrell Barnes in Ogden v. Ogden seems to cite it to say, that a foreign nullity is of no effect in England. The learned judge intimates that if a decree of nuUity on the ground of impotence were given in either the court of the domicile, or where the marriage was cele- brated, it might be treated as universally binding. Why a decree on this ground is to be given special recognition is not explained. At any rate, the doctrine in the cases stated, that the decree of nulUty of a foreign court is not conclusive in England is recognized to be the existing law.^° The resulting situation is certainly an unfortunate one, but is not the only instance of the EngHsh law's refusing to recognize rights given under foreign law which it gives under similar conditions by its own. " [1908] P. 46, 78 et seq. «» 2 Sw. & Tr. 67 (i860). " I Hagg. Cons. 294, 297 (1798). 4 ed., 114; Westlake, supra, 98.
 * " 6 Halsbury's Laws of England, 271; Foote's Private Int. Jurisprudenxe.