United Arab Emirates Sharia-Based Judgments in American Court
Back when the debate about foreign law—including especially Islamic law—in U.S. courts was in the news, I blogged quite a bit about it. I also wrote two law review articles on the subject, see Foreign Law in American Courts and Religious Law (Especially Islamic Law) in American Courts. My basic view was that:
- American courts often rightly do consider foreign law and foreign judgments, because American law calls on them to do that; and it would generally be senseless for American law to categorically block American courts from doing that.
- That sometimes includes the judgments of religious courts, and judgments of foreign courts applying religious law that is part of the foreign legal system.
- In some situations, American courts should refuse to apply foreign or religious law, or enforce the judgments of foreign or religious courts—but existing American law already has the tools needed for that.
Here’s a recent illustration of this (especially item 3) from CSHK Dubai Contracting LLC v. Ali, decided last week by a Texas Court of Appeals (opinion by Justice Dana Womack, joined by Justices Elizabeth Kerr and Dabney Bassel):
This dispute—which spans multiple decades, continents, and court systems—arises out of Appellant CSHK Dubai Contracting LLC’s contract with Trident International Holdings FZCO to build a residential tower in Dubai. After a dispute arose between CSHK and Trident regarding Trident’s payments under the contract, CSHK initiated several legal proceedings in Dubai against Trident and Trident’s founders, Appellees Sadruddin Enayat Ali, Abdul Sultan Jamal, and Wazir Ali Daridia Ultimately, CSHK obtained a judgment (the Dubai Judgment) from a Dubai court awarding it … roughly $50 million …. Because Appellees resided in Texas following the entry of the Dubai Judgment, CSHK filed a lawsuit in the Texas trial court asking that the court recognize the Dubai Judgment under the Uniform Foreign-Country Money Judgments Recognition Act (the Act). See Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code Ann. § 36A.001 et seq.
So far, makes perfect sense: Texas law generally calls for enforcing foreign judgments, which is eminently sensible in our transnational commercial system. Texas courts must do this, not because of some abstract interna
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