Judicial Notice in Foreign Affairs
Legal disputes about foreign affairs are generally settled by judicial notice by obtaining the information directly from the office of the Secretary of State (in the United States) or the Foreign Secretary (in the United Kingdom). For example, if a litigant in an extradition hearing attempted to argue that Israel was not a sovereign state, a statement from the Secretary of State that the U.S. recognized Israel as a sovereign state would settle the issue and no evidence could be led to the contrary.
Recently, Court of Appeals decisions regarding the legal rights of detainees of Guantanamo Bay took judicial notice of Cuba having no sovereignty over the U.S. naval base in that location despite claims by the United States government that it was Cuban territory and not subject to the application of United States law.
Federal courts and the courts of most jurisdictions have determined that matters of foreign law are subject to permissive judicial notice.
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Famous quotes containing the words judicial, notice, foreign and/or affairs:
“Scarcely any political question arises in the United States that is not resolved, sooner or later, into a judicial question.”
—Alexis de Tocqueville (1805–1859)
“Strange goings on! Jones did it slowly, deliberately, in the bathroom, with a knife, at midnight. What he did was butter a piece of toast. We are too familiar with the language of action to notice at first an anomaly: the ‘it’ of ‘Jones did it slowly, deliberately,...’ seems to refer to some entity, presumably an action, that is then characterized in a number of ways.”
—Donald Davidson (b. 1917)
“Genius resembles a bell; in order to ring it must be suspended into pure air, and when a foreign body touches it, its joyful tone is silenced.”
—Franz Grillparzer (1791–1872)
“Every new development for the last three centuries has brought men closer to a state of affairs in which absolutely nothing would be recognized in the whole world as possessing a claim to obedience except the authority of the State. The majority of people in Europe obey nothing else.”
—Simone Weil (1909–1943)