Over the past year, several state legislatures have proposed measures that would restrict the consideration of religious law in domestic courts. In November 2010, voters in Oklahoma definitively approved a state constitutional amendment that would prohibit the use or application of Islamic law (sharia) in state courts, which led to a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the amendment under the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Numerous other states have proposed a variety of state constitutional amendments or statutory provisions with similar goals of limiting the legal recognition of sharia and religious law generally. Religious law binds the followers of a particular religion. Although the First Amendment bars the government from adopting religious law as binding legal authority, religious law nonetheless may apply in certain legal scenarios. Parties to private agreements or civil transactions (e.g., contracts, arbitration agreements, domestic relations agreements or settlements) may provide that religious law would apply to the terms of the agreement or in the case of a dispute or breach of the agreement. In such instances, the application of religious law can only be included if each of the parties to the agreement knowingly consents to such terms. Religious law may be invoked in the public law context as a defense to certain actions or violations of criminal prohibitions under certain scenarios. It cannot be a defense to laws of general applicability that only tangentially affect religious exercise, but it may be used if a particular law is deemed to target religious exercise. This report will discuss various legal issues related to the role of religious law in U.S. courts. It will provide a brief discussion of religious law and the role it may play within the United States and its judicial system. It also includes a broader analysis of the First Amendment concerns that may be triggered by government actions that attempt to limit religious practices in the United States. Finally, the report explains the role that foreign law generally may have within the U.S. legal system and potential unintended consequences that may arise from restrictions on the consideration of religious and foreign laws. Various religions have developed their own set of precepts to guide the actions and behaviors of their particular religious community and followers. For the purposes of this report, these precepts are generally referred to as religious law—that is, the rules of a particular religious community, as opposed to secular law, which would be laws adopted by the government of a particular state or nation. Sharia —often translated as Islamic law, which encompasses rules, norms, processes, and practices to be followed by Muslims, has been of particular interest recently. However, it is not the only religious legal structure that might intersect with issues before U.S. courts. For example, in Judaism, the Halakhah and Haggadah comprise the norms by which individuals of the Jewish faith are governed. Similarly, canon law is a body of law that applies to certain sects of Christianity. These bodies of religious law may play as relevant a role in certain legal actions as sharia might play in others. In the United States, these religious laws have no legally binding effect on U.S. citizens because religious laws cannot be adopted by federal, state, or local governments under the First Amendment. Rather, individuals who identify with a particular religious group may voluntarily subject themselves to such religious laws by their association with the community. For example, if a particular religious sect or denomination requires its members to dress modestly, and an individual who is a member of that particular group does not comply with the dress code, that individual would be in violation of that group's religious law. The individual's belief in the religion's precepts would guide his or her individual actions, with any sanction for non-compliance generally remaining a private matter between the individual and the religious group. The individual would not be subject to any penalty by the government because the government does not enforce such a dress code. Interestingly, this distinction between religious and secular laws can become complicated when an action might be governed by both religious law and secular law. For example, many religious denominations' beliefs prohibit murder under their religious code. Both federal and state laws also prohibit murder. Thus, an individual who commits murder would be in violation of both a religious law and a secular law and may be sanctioned by the religious group, the government, or both. The First Amendment's protections for religious exercise are not limited to traditional notions of worship, but extend to other behaviors that may be motivated by religious beliefs. Religious law often times is not limited to traditional worship or religious activities. Rather it may extend to day-to-day practices and behaviors. That is, Christianity may require attendance of religious services on Sunday but it also instructs its followers to perform charitable acts toward other individuals. Under Christian religious law, an individual's exercise of Christian beliefs may include both going to church and assisting one's neighbors. Similarly, in compliance with sharia, Muslims should not only observe daily prayers, but also conduct financial dealings consistent with their religious law. This understanding of the broad scope of many religious laws is significant when considering how these laws may intersect with the secular legal system. Various commentators have expressed concern that the legal concepts embodied in sharia would influence domestic judicial decisions. There are several areas of law in which concerns about the consideration of sharia or other religious law in U.S. courts may arise. Although application of religious principles as a part of the U.S. legal system would generally be inconsistent with the First Amendment, certain legal scenarios may invoke valid consideration of religious principles. For example, parties to a contract enjoy a great deal of leeway to establish binding agreements requiring contractual disputes to be submitted to arbitration. In their arbitration agreement, the disputing parties can bind themselves to use a particular arbitrator. Courts have held that arbitration agreements providing for what is commonly referred to as "biblically based mediation" (relying on specified principles of the Christian Bible) are enforceable. Likewise, courts have also dealt with arbitration agreements specifying that Islamic arbitrators, relying on sharia or sharia-based law, govern the dispute settlement. For instance, a Texas state appellate court recognized a signed arbitration agreement providing for arbitration by the Texas Islamic Court as valid and enforceable and compelled submission of all claims to the Texas Islamic Court. In Minnesota, a state appellate court upheld an arbitration award from an Islamic arbitration committee applying Islamic law. Though some of the legal ramifications of these Islamic arbitration agreements are still unclear, courts have in most respects treated them no differently than other arbitration agreements. Such agreements reflect the mutual consent of the parties to use Islamic principles and institutions in subsequent disputes. Another example of the influence of sharia in domestic courts is S.D. v. M.J.R. , a New Jersey domestic violence case. In that dispute, a Muslim wife filed for a restraining order against her husband after several instances of physical abuse and non-consensual sexual intercourse. Though the trial court found that the defendant had engaged in sexual acts that were clearly against his wife's wishes, it did not grant a final restraining order because the husband lacked the requisite criminal intent to commit sexual assault. This decision was based on the theory that the defendant acted based on his religious belief that a husband may demand to have intercourse with his wife whenever he desired. On appeal, the New Jersey Appellate Division overturned the trial court's decision and remanded the case to the lower court for entry of a final restraining order. Noting that the case involved "a conflict between the criminal law and religious precepts," the appellate court held that the defendant knowingly engaged in non-consensual sexual intercourse and thus could not be excused for his religious beliefs. These examples of cases in which sharia and other religious law have been raised represent only two of the scenarios in which religious law might be considered by a court. Courts generally appear willing to allow private parties to private agreements to consent to obligations of religious law that they may choose to apply to a particular agreement. However, there are situations that may arise where the application of religious law may be contrary to public policy or raise other general concerns. Thus, there is a tension between the permissibility and potential desirability of allowing individuals to seek application of religious law under private agreements as a matter of free exercise of their religion and the potential unforeseen risks of such application of religious law in a broader context. Consider, for example, an individual who validly executes a will for the distribution of his assets after death. That individual knowingly and willingly creates a legal document in accordance with his wishes. If the individual provides that the assets be distributed according to his religion's law, it may appear clear that he wishes to comply with his religious obligations and according to traditional interpretation of wills, the intent of the decedent is paramount. However, without further instruction as to what that particular individual believes the religion's law to include, the court that probates the will would then face questions about the content of religious law, a subject that courts tend to avoid. Had the individual specifically provided the principles of religious law that he wished to be applied, the court may be able to objectively probate the will according to his wishes for religious law, without facing the constitutional obstacles associated with probing religious doctrine. This example illustrates the difficulty of reconciling the various tensions associated with drafting a limitation on the role of religious law in U.S. courts. On one hand, the constitutional right of free exercise suggests that such a restriction might contravene a public policy of independence to follow one's one religious conscience. On the other hand, the constitutional prohibition on interference of the government in religious matters suggests that consideration of religious law by domestic courts might undermine the public policy of ensuring that an individual's religious conscience is indeed self-determined. A legislative restriction, whether on specific religious law or religious law generally, is likely to create numerous unforeseen risks and potential unintended consequences. Although a comprehensive explanation of sharia is beyond the scope of this report, a brief overview of sharia is necessary to understand the context in which it may arise in courts.