Our Law, Their Law, History, and the Citation of Foreign Law

The objection to citation of foreign law in U.S. Supreme Court decisions is bad history and bad law. First, let me briefly review how the objection has come to prominence recently. On June 26, 2003, the U.S. Supreme Court decided Lawrence v. Texas, striking down a same-sex sodomy statute. Justice Antonin Scalia, in the course of his dissenting opinion, wrote that the majority\u27s citation of foreign law was meaningless dicta, [d]angerous dicta. \u27 He added that the majority\u27s opinion was the product of a law-profession culture, that has largely signed on to the so-called homosexual agenda