The Coalition of the Swilling

IS there such a thing anymore?

Only for those who WANT to be English, and not some self-loathing, spineless multi-cultural cretin.

There's nothing radical about that statement at all. This is not a new legal principle. You do it everytime you buy a plane ticket or a ski ticket or buy most any large product. You agree to be bound by the laws of a specific forum, possibly even a foreign forum.

For instance, if you buy passage on a steam ship bound for Timbuktu from New York, you might contractually agree to have any dispute governed by British law, or French or German law for that matter.

This has ever been true with civil law. It is not true with criminal law, nor should it be.

As for marriages, it depends on the jurisdiction and the language of the statutes, but in Texas most marital agreements can be contracted for that are not compliant with Texas statutes.

So, if a Muslim wants to marry someone and both parties agree that the obligations of the marriage will be determined by Sharia law, that is their right. They cannot, however, relinquish all their rights. For instance, a woman cannot be held in a marriage if the civil laws protect her and allow for divorce if she chooses. The settlement of the divorce can be done in compliance with Sharia law if so agreed beforehand. There will likely be a good argument against it, but it's not inconceivable or radical that a court would agree to it.

In England they're a bunch of wackos.We should have
listened to Lindbergh and let Germany and England fight it out.It's like bacteria and antibotics;
we allowed the evil strain to survive..And they'll give all of us a bad case of the whooping cough(cough,cough,)!

What Skyler said. The Daily Mail is throwing a lunatic shit-fit over something very legally normal and not of new vintage: choice of law has been around practically forever.

That said, Lord Phillips is dreaming if he thinks an English court applying a Sharia marriage contract is going to be the same as its applying a Dutch marine insurance contract: it's not the substance but the obvious pie-in-the-sky Ivory Tower style in which he said that bodes ill, since there's no way in this context that parties are going to truly be consenting to such contracts.

Oh, and a pedantic quibble and tangent:

"...you might contractually agree to have any dispute governed by British law..."

By English law, or by Scots law, or by the law of Northern Ireland. "British law," insofar as such a thing exists, is public law, whether criminal, administrative or constitutional.

There is no "British law" of contracts or torts or property or probate or family law: the private law of the UK is the private law of its three distinct legal jurisdictions, English law being shorthand for the law of England and Wales, which have shared one legal system since the Law in Wales Act of 1536. The Act of Union between England and Scotland merged their parliaments but not their courts or their preexisting systems of law: Scots law, while significantly influenced by the common law, is, was, and remains civil law, though uncodified civil law as the rest of the civil-law world basically was before Napoleon started the whole codification process in 1808. That makes it a mixed jurisdiction, like Louisiana and Quebec: civilian private law, common-law public law.

Dave J:If you're the Dave that I insulted before,
let me take this opportunity to apologize to you.
The statements I made were not directed towards you.
A person on this site is total stranger to me.
What a person does for a living or believes in is
a mystery to me.
This site is very interesting and seems to attract
very intelligent and creative people.That is why
I like it.
Sorry if I'm As3hole,