7.01 Introduction

The common law never understood that a jurisdiction which was based on service of process on the defendant could be asserted where the defendant was not within the territorial jurisdiction of the court. It still does not, for service of English process within the territorial jurisdiction of a foreign sovereign is not something which the common law, with its clear perception of and respect for comitas gentium, could justify.1 Parliament, however, made provision for service on a defendant out of the jurisdiction with the prior permission of the court (a requirement designed to keep the intrusion into a foreign sovereign’s territorial jurisdiction under some form of restraint), and the vastly elaborate current scheme, which traces its origins to the Common Law Procedure Act 1852, is examined in the following chapter.