Kotik wrote:Cogito wrote:Kotik wrote:If you're caught comitting a crime in a foreign nation, you have a RIGHT to call up your embassy for involvement of your own countries authorities.
You only have that right if the law of the country you're in gives you that right. It's not true to say that anybody in any foreign country has that right.
Sure, but we're talking about it in the context of 22nd century starfleet. I have slight doubts that their laws will be styled after North Korea.
Really, we've got two discussions going on in parallel: contemporary law, and trek law. I was responding to your comments about contemporary law. In the real world current time, a foreigner committing a crime only has the rights granted to them by the jurisdiction they're in. There is no general right to have legal representation, be allowed contact with your embassy (or anyone else), have a fair trial (or any trial). If the local law said you're liable to summary judgement and execution then that's what you're going to get.
The same would hold for trek law. The rights of aliens in earth's jurisdiction would be defined entirely and exclusively by our laws. I suppose that a hundred years after first contact we would probably have figured out how to deal with non-humans but conceivably, in the interim, you could have a situation where an obviously sentient alien would have no legal rights at all. If you imagine that one of the Roswell conspiracies was true and there was a genuine alien held prisoner on Earth this very second, I doubt that the people holding them prisoner would be breaking any laws.