American Courts Using Foreign Law that Incorporates Religious Law
At The Washington Post, Eugene Volokh, professor at the UCLA School of Law and blogger of the Volokh Conspiracy (now housed at The Post), discusses how American courts should interpret foreign laws that incorporate Sharia principles. He writes, “While American courts cannot and should not decide what sharia calls for … American courts rightly do consider the law of foreign countries that apply sharia. In doing so, courts don’t purport to decide what Islamic law actually requires … They simply try to identify what law would be applied by the courts of the foreign country, whether that country is Saudi Arabia, Israel or Greece.”