In follow up to my earlier note about Moral Leadership, I have some comments about legal jurisdiction. I have been wondering why there are legal cases in Spain around this women’s world cup football kiss when the incident took place in Australia. I managed with some difficulty to track down information on this topic, and it seems that the Australian police have not investigated since they have not received a formal complaint. There is apparently the possibility to take legal action in Spain on incidents involving Spanish nationals abroad if certain conditions are met: the victim or prosecutors must have filed a complaint with Spanish courts, the accused must not already have been convicted, absolved or pardonned for the crime and the crime must be punishable in the country where it occurred. The last point seems to be a sticking point and needs to be evaluated in Australia, which appears to be holding up the legal case in Spain.
I find the whole thing rather weird. Few are talking publicly about jurisdiction or about legal action in Australia and almost no-one seems to find it weird that there is legal action in Spain for something which happened abroad. Am I the only one who finds this legal point to be significant? I am sure that on on internet chat site if I bring it up people will attack me and say that these legal points are not important, what is important is … blah, blah, blah. Maybe they are even right in a way but I am concerned that something fundamental is wrong here. As a general rule, we are all subject to the law of the country in which we are physically present; if it becomes normalised to apply law based on nationality and not on physical location, then the legal systems around the world are going to become really messy. Anomalously, the USA already often enough considers USA legal jurisdiction to apply worldwide. Personally I don’t want to have to consider the legal systems of the country of the person I am talking to when interacting with them. Life is complicated enough. Legal jurisdiction may not be a sexy topic but it is an important one in daily life.
Another odd thing about the women’s world cup football kiss is that it is difficult to find video of the incident online. There are some still photos of the kiss and with some difficulty I can find a clip of a few seconds showing the kiss incident but I can find nowhere the 10 secs before or after to put the kiss into full context. Why has this disappeared? Are people afraid to publish it online or are people worried about the legal implications? Everyone is talking about it online and it was broadcast live watched by millions and yet taking another look at the video is very very difficult. This seems odd to me. What is going on?