"Foreign country" need NOT be "a state"

FOREIGN COUNTRY IS DIFFERENT FROM A STATE; A FOREIGN COUNTRY DOES NOT NEED TO POSSESS THE ESSENTIAL ELEMENTS OF A STATE.

It does not admit of doubt that if a foreign country is to be identified with a state, it is required in line with Pound's formulation that it be a politically organized sovereign community independent of outside control bound by penalties of nationhood, legally supreme within its territory, acting through a government functioning under a regime of law. It is thus a sovereign person with the people composing it viewed as an organized corporate society under a government with the legal competence to exact obedience to its commands. It has been referred to as a body-politic organized by common consent for mutual defense and mutual safety and to promote the general welfare. Correctly has it been described by Esmein as "the juridical personification of the nation."This is to view it in the light of its historical development. The stress is on its being a nation, its people occupying a definite territory, politically organized, exercising by means of its government its sovereign will over the individuals within it and maintaining its separate international personality. Laski could speak of it then as a territorial society divided into government and subjects, claiming within its allotted area a supremacy over all other institutions. McIver similarly would point to the power entrusted to its government to maintain within its territory the conditions of a legal order and to enter into international relations. With the latter requisite satisfied, international law do not exact independence as a condition of statehood. So Hyde did opine. (Collector of Internal Revenue vs. Campos Rueda; G.R. No. L-13250, Oct 29, 1971)