§ 36A.002.Definitions

Two definitions, and the first is drafted by exclusion for a reason.

"Foreign country" means a government other than the United States; a state, district, commonwealth, territory, or insular possession of the United States; or any other government with respect to which the decision whether to recognize a judgment is initially subject to determination under the full faith and credit clause.

The third exclusion is the careful one. Rather than listing every governmental unit whose judgments are covered by full faith and credit, it defines them by the test itself.

That matters for entities whose status is not obvious. Tribal courts, territorial courts and other bodies whose judgments may fall under full faith and credit analysis are excluded by the operation of the test rather than by a list that might be incomplete.

The word "initially" is doing work in that clause. What matters is whether the recognition question starts under full faith and credit, not how it ultimately comes out.

Defining by exclusion also makes the chapter’s coverage automatic. Any government not on the excluded list is a foreign country, so no amendment is needed as nations change.

"Foreign-country judgment" means a judgment of a court of a foreign country — which is as simple as it looks, and puts all the limiting work in the applicability section.

Note that the definition turns on the court, not on the parties or the subject. A judgment of a foreign court between two Texans about Texas events is still a foreign-country judgment.

The two chapters therefore divide the field between them without overlapping, and the dividing line is the full faith and credit clause.