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The World's Legal Systems Lecture 1
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The World’s Legal Systems – Lecture 1Intro & Comparative Law
Why study other legal systems?
Singh v. Entry Clearance Officer New Delhi [2004] EWCA Civ 1075. This case shows us what this
class is going to be about and why the legal practice is so much more complex and challenging
than we have been taught up until now. This is a case to illustrate the significance of studying
other legal systems and how different legal systems are interwoven. This case starts in 1996.
A man and a wife who have both the British and the Indian citizenship but who live in the UK,
decide that they want to adopt a child because the wife is infertile. She is incapable of having
a child of her own. Both were members of the Sikh religious community in the UK. The husband
owned a profitable textile factory in the UK but they still had close family connections in India.
When he tells his family that he wants to adopt a child, his brother in India offers him his own
new-born child. This is, according to custom, very common in Sikh religious practice with the
belief that if someone in your family is incapable of having a child of their own, this is one of
the more significant gifts that you can give to them. You can give them your own new-born
child as a way of trying to help them realize their own wish for having a family. So in 1996 they
travel to India shortly after the child is born and they conduct a religious adoption ceremony
according to the Sikh culture. After the adoption ceremony, the natural parents of the child
and the adoptive parents of the child write together a legal document that is also signed by a
notary to testify that they indeed acknowledge and wilfully went through this adoption
ceremony according to Sikh religious faith. In India, where this ceremony took place, that is in
and of itself sufficient to constitute an adoption. So at this point, the child is now legally the
child of the adoptive parents according to Indian law. After six months, they want to return to
the UK and bring their new adopted child with them. They file for a permit for this at the British
Embassy in Delhi, but the case officer in New Delhi rejects the claim. They appeal this rejection
to the tribunal which treats cases of immigration decisions in the UK, but again the rejection
is upheld at the tribunal. The reason which the tribunal and the case officer give them, is that
the adoption is not recognized by English law. Despite being the parents of the child according
to Indian law, they are not allowed to bring the child home with them according to British law.
On the one hand, they are parents in the country where they don’t want to live but where the
child lives at the moment. On the other hand, they are not parents of the child in the country
where they do want to live. The UK claims that they do not recognize the couple being the
legal parents of this child for two reasons:
o The adoption was not rooted in the best interest of the child, which is considered to
be an international standard for adoption practices and which has been documented
in a number of international treaties related to children’s rights. So the idea is that the
adoption should prioritise first and foremost the interest of the adopted child and only
thereafter the interest of the parents who adopting the child. This is a problem,
because in this case the natural parents of the child were also quite wealthy. They had
a number of children themselves. These children were well off. They were educated
and they were well raised and there were plenty of financial resources to send these
children to a good school. There was no reason to say that this wouldn’t happen to the
latest child. So the reason for the adoption has nothing to do with the circumstances
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