“A Solution in Search of a Problem”

This news comes via Salon:

A federal judge has blocked Oklahoma’s proposed constitutional amendment to block state judges from considering Sharia or international law when handing down decisions, ruling that the ban violates the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.

“[Defendants] do not identify any actual problem the challenged amendment seeks to solve. Indeed, they admitted at the preliminary injunction hearing that they did not know of even a single instance where an Oklahoma court had applied Sharia law or used the legal precepts of other nations or cultures, let alone that such applications or uses had resulted in concrete problems in Oklahoma,” writes Chief District Judge Vicki Miles-LaGrange in her opinion.

Sadly, this sort of paranoid, religion-based, and anti-constitutional idiocy isn’t confined to the Sooner State. As Wikipedia explains, “More than two dozen U.S. states have considered measures intended to restrict judges from consulting sharia law.”