Maybe if you go to another place, and break a custom that you didn't
know about, then it's your fault? And that you should be forced to
do the punishment for breaking that custom, even though you didn't
know about it?

I mean, really.

  It happens all the time, whenever a custom also happens to be a local
law.  What if the Amazon village had been a legally autonomous region where
these customs were law?  It is a standard principle of law around the world
that ignorance of a law is no excuse, but serves only to lessen the penalty
at the discretion of the court.  

Sou ka... But you see, that only works if you are in their country. If
they come to YOUR country, their laws and customs do not apply. So if
they tried to punish you while in YOUR land, then they will be in the
wrong.

So Shampoo is in the wrong here, Ranma is not at fault for becoming
engaged to Shampoo, and Shampoo will have to go back to her own country
and find a man who will live by her laws and customs to marry her.

So Ranma is only engaged to Akane and Ukyou. Ranma and Shampoo have
nothing to do with each other, except in Shampoo and Cologn's mind.
They are in the wrong here.

Ranma is not engaged to Shampoo by any sense of the word.

Akane and Ukyou are engaged by a custom of the country where they all
grew up and lived.

Shampoo is nothing to Ranma. Akane and Ukyou are engaged to him.

  Spam: I may be interviewing Richard Posner, U.S. federal judge and a top
legal theorist (who also happens to be an adjunct law prof. here at
Chicago) for one of the school newspapers.  Perhaps I should ask him about
the above point.  It would be interesting to hear his views. 

Go for it ... then ask him about laws and customs being forced on a man
who lives in another country, when the foreignors come to his land and
try to make him follow their ways.

Kun-chan, you may be interested to know that he wrote a book entitled "Sex
and Reason." 

Oh? Any good? What's it about?

Kun-chan...
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* http://www.ecr.mu.oz.au/~caseawr *
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* High Priestess of Ryouga         *
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