In law, comity is "a practice among different political entities (as countries, states, or courts of different jurisdictions)" involving the "mutual recognition of legislative, executive, and judicial acts." Etymology Comity derives from the Latin comitas, courtesy, from cemis, friendly, courteous. International law The doctrine of international comity has been described variously "as a choice-of-law principle, a synonym for private international law, a rule of public international law, a moral obligation, expediency, courtesy, reciprocity, utility, or diplomacy. Authorities disagree as to whether comity is a rule of natural law, custom, treaty, or domestic law. Indeed, there is not even agreement that comity is a rule of law at all." Because the doctrine touches on many different principles, it is regarded as "one of the more confusing doctrines evoked in cases touching upon the interests of foreign states." The doctrine of international comity was created by a group of Dutch jurists in the late seventeenth century, most prominently Ulrich Huber. Huber and others sought a way to handle conflicts of law in a way that would reinforce the idea of Westphalian sovereignty. Huber wrote that comitas gentium ("civility of nations") required the application of foreign law in certain cases because sovereigns "so act by way of comity that rights acquired within the limits of a government retain their force everywhere so far as they do not cause prejudice to the powers or rights of such government or of their subjects." Huber "believed that comity was a principle of international law" but also that "the decision to apply foreign law itself was left up to the state as an act of free will." The idea of comity was introduced into English law by Lord Mansfield, a British barrister and jurist. Mansfield viewed the application of comity as discretionary, with courts applying foreign law "except to the extent that it conflicted with principles of natural justice or public policy." Mansfield held in Somerset v Stewart (King's Bench 1772), for example, that slavery was so morally odious that a British court would not recognize the property rights of an American slaveholder in his slave. In the United States, Louisiana attorney Samuel Livermore (who wrote the first American treatise of conflict of laws in 1828) expressly rejected the comity doctrine as formulated by Mansfield and earlier writers, instead arguing that "courts were bound by international law to apply the same law that a foreign court would