Why not? is there a prohibition on citing foreign law?
I assume that comes up a lot when giving advice to people involved in a marital break-up and the issue is property division and support obligations. 
If they don’t want to pay income tax the answer is very simple. Renounce your US citizenship after you move to a country that has no income tax. There’s quite a few, Dubai and Qatar for example. I’m sure they’ll welcome all the “freemen”
No mas! I’m only 150 posts into that thread and my head hurts :smack:, my fear is great that this is clearly a symptom of potentially permanent brain damage.
Y’all win, there’s no hope, and I’m quite certain the only folks who will leave the courthouse broken are those that aren’t either already insane or aren’t on seriously large quantities of drugs (quantities that even Hunter Thompson would find to be excessive).
I now propose either a change of venue to New Bedford, Massachusetts or crowd-funding a makeover for the local courthouse . . . like this.
CMC fnord!
Not brain damage. Mental illness. Paranoia, Narcissism and/or Schizophrenia. One of the classic signs of schizophrenia is believing you have found some secret pattern to the world that no one else has ever noticed.
No, no my head painn might bee braaiain dammaaage. 
<Drooling Smiley
CMC fnord!
While that may be the case for some of the SovCits, it doesn’t apply to most of them.
When this stuff began to appear in the courts 20+ years ago, it was not uncommon for courts to send the SovCit for a psych assessment, to see if he was fit to stand trial. The answer that came back most of the time was that there was no mental disorder. The individual fervently believed in some very unusual political and ideological positions, but was not mentally ill.
That’s only because they don’t have a dsm list of symptoms and insurance code yet 
At the federal level, no, though obviously foreign cases are generally persuasive rather than controlling authority (in theory, a pre-1777 English/Commonwealth case could be controlling). At the state level, there are now a number of statutes precluding consideration of foreign law (of any kind) because of the moronic backlash over largely imaginary Sharia courts.
“largely imaginary”?
Without going into too much detail, US state courts have (correctly) followed Islamic law in deciding contractual issues in religious marriage contracts before. So the issue is not wholly imaginary; it just doesn’t mean what people railing against it think it did.
IOW, what is largely imaginary is the application of Sharia law in the United States, insofar as it is never applied against a party who did not consent to having it applied–just like any other contractual language, including Jewish and Christian contracts.
In certain cases, people can opt into binding arbitration systems that can oblige themselves to follow the rulings of religious tribunals (historically I believe this was most commonly rabbis ruling on matters of Jewish family law and the like). The secular courts can be called upon to enforce said rulings because the arbitration agreement is a legal contract. Replace the rabbis with a Sharia court and zomg the end of the world. Some jurisdictions have outlawed all forms of religious arbitration as a result - legally speaking, that is. Obviously completely voluntary religious arbitration can’t be outlawed, but using contract law to enforce the rulings has been outlawed.
I personally mostly agree with this - if people don’t want to follow the dictates of a religious tribunal even if they’ve voluntarily appeared before it, they shouldn’t have to. Their religious community can apply social pressure, but the weight of the court system needn’t be brought to bear in such cases. That said, it’s nothing like the horrible atrocity some people seem to think it is.
Yeah, but without using any capitals and in red letters, so he’s OK…
In Canadian family law, when a court is faced with a conflict of laws issue arising out of religious law, the court first looks at whether the agreement overall meets the basics of what a Canadian contract would require, and if so, then looks at the specific clause in dispute. If the clause is outside of Canadian values, the clause is tossed. What then are Canadian values? It depends . . . . 
The Supreme Court of Canada’s Justice Abella summed it up nicely in her introduction to the SCC’s decision on Bruker v. Marcovitz, [2007] 3 SCR 607, 2007 SCC 54 (CanLII)
In the last decade or so, there have been more and more matters brought before the courts dealing with family conflict of law matters, particularly Islamic mahrs. Bearing in mind that this is not a settled area of law, from what I’ve seen, the decisions apply Canadian family law principles.
For example, mahrs (a gift from the groom to the to the bride at marriage) are enforceable, but agreements made at marriage as to who will have custody of the kids should the marriage fail are not enforceable. The former stands because it is a basic monetary contract freely and knowingly entered into. The latter fails because it is in the best interest of a child to make custody access decisions in light of the circumstances at the time, rather than with a cookie cutter years in advance.
I’m allergic to Shariah law. It’s fucked up so severely in so many ways that the last time I represented someone entering into a marriage contract based on Shariah law I ended up resigning. But that being said, I’m not concerned that it will hurt Canadian law or people living in Canada so long as Canadian values trump when there is a conflict of law.
Muffin, it seems to me you’re saying that such contracts are enforceable unless they are contrary to Canadian law, which is true of any contract.
Cliven Bundy denied bail.
Fed detention memo gives insight into Bundy ranching style.
Word of advice, don’t eat Bundy’s ornery assed, disease ridden feral cows.
That document is a thing of beauty. It is remarkably plain-spoken for a federal legal document.
It’s also very satisfactory that it uses Bundy’s own statements that he doesn’t recognize federal authority as one of the justifications for denying him bail.
Fubaya, thanks for posting that - I thought he was a real rancher, at least.
that document is excellent!