ABSTRACT
This chapter explores two questions: Does the country and its courts acknowledge the non-Western legal order as law? Do they acknowledge the non-Westem law as the equal of their own Western system? The earliest attitude of Westerners to this question is to regard the rules of social intercourse observed in non-Westem communities as not being in any true sense law: according to this view, they may be usages or customs or they may have been imposed by force but they cannot be recognised as law. In international private law, the Netherlands is one of the countries which applies the principle of nationality to questions of personal status. A marriage of an Englishman contracted anywhere in the world is to be regarded as an English monogamous marriage because, according to the law of his English domicile, he can only contract a monogamous marriage.
