Personal Status and Conflicts of Laws

Abstract

The legal status of the foreigner has always been of particular interest, as it has been found over time that the rights that a natural or legal person may have in a foreign country have particular consequences. Part of the population of a country other than the one in which he is located or lives, the foreigner who does not have Romanian citizenship, but who is found on the territory of a state, may have the status of stateless, refugee or displaced person. The foreigner's legal condition contains all the legal norms that regulate the legal acts and deeds of foreigners, natural or legal persons. The legal norms that regulate this matter are material norms that belong to Romanian law and, as such, the legal condition of the foreigner is subject to Romanian law, as the law of the forum, respectively as the law of the place where the foreigner is found. The sufficiently rich Romanian legislation that regulates the field took into account the particular nature of social relations, aiming to be as close as possible to concrete situations. The current trend, contained mainly in the provisions of the Civil Code that "liberalizes" the possibility of applying a different rule of law than the classical one, we consider to be a step forward and is in line with the obvious progress of the science of conflict law, also resulting from its historical evolution. The foreigner's legal status is made up of the set of rights and obligations they enjoy based on state legislation and according to international conventions. This means, concretely, the set of legal rules that regulate the foreigner's ability to use, i.e. the rights and obligations he has in a state as a foreigner. We emphasize that, also in the case of the legal person, the legal condition of the foreigner can be used, this being "that collective subject of law, holder of rights and obligations, whose personal status is governed by its national law".