Eugene Volokh: Islamic agreements in civil courts, an Ohio ruling and more
Eugene Volokh has this post on the Volokh Conspiracy. He discusses several recent cases involving the intersection of family law and religious freedom (eg. Islamic and Jewish divorces or dowries). He concludes:
. . . . There are indeed reasons why civil courts may not enforce certain contracts, for instance when enforcing the contract requires interpretation of religious doctrine, or when it would require ordering people to perform an act that has purely religious significance. (I should note that there’s a conflict among courts about whether enforcing prenuptial contracts to give a Jewish religious divorce, called a get, would violate the Establishment Clause; but that, I think, is because the giving of the divorce, as opposed to paying money, is indeed an act that has purely religious significance.) But when the contract simply calls for a payment of $25,000 in the event of a divorce, and the parties do indeed get civilly divorced (so there’s no need to determine whether there’s a valid religious divorce), then it seems to me that the motivation for the contract should not make any difference.