ABSTRACT
This is, obviously, the weakest connection, as it involves no more than a temporary location in the country without any family, work, and political or emotional commitment to the place. For this reason, it cannot possibly suffice, of itself, as the determinant of the personal law. That is not to say, of course, that mere presence is not significant in the conflict of laws and we shall consider later some of the localising rules which depend, or at least operate upon, the mere presence of the parties within a particular jurisdiction, as, for example, the rule that the formal validity of marriage is refereable to the law of the place of celebration (lex loci celebrationis),14 however transient the parties’ relationship with that place may be. However, those rules do not purport to be making a personal link, they are only making a factual link. Also, it should be noted that, at common law,15 the mere presence of the defendant in England is sufficient to enable a process to be served on him and, thus, to make the individual subject to the jurisdiction of the English court.16
