Posted by Eugene Volokh:
Hmong Law:
http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2009_08_16-2009_08_22.shtml#1250632497
Readers who are interested in choice of law, and in the use of foreign
law in U.S. courts, will likely be interested in this [1]today's
Minnesota Court of Appeals decision in Ramsey County ex rel. Yang v.
Lee. The conclusion:
The county�s assertion that the law of the Hmong governs is not
implausible, but it is not supported by any authority that
demonstrates that the county has correctly described the law of
Thailand. The county did not offer any expert testimony regarding
the legal effect of the Conflict of Laws Act and its application to
Hmong living in Thailand, and appellant�s expert on Hmong culture
testified that he had no knowledge of Thai law regarding adoption.
Even if the county is correct that the Conflict of Laws Act
applies, the language of the act, on its face, suggests that to
determine what law applies, more must be known about the facts of
the case than that Yang, Lee, and Y.P.L. are all Hmong. Therefore,
because the county has neither produced a foreign country�s
adoption decree for Y.P.L.�s adoption nor demonstrated that the
adoption satisfied the legal requirements for an adoption in
Thailand, we conclude that the district court correctly determined
that the county did not prove that the cultural adoption is
recognized in Thailand as valid.
The backdrop, of course, is that people who move to America bring
their legally defined family relationships (marriages, adoptions, and
the like) with them. When American courts must then apply American law
(e.g., child support law) that turns on those family relationships,
they must determine and apply often obscure foreign law rules in the
process.
References
1. http://www.mncourts.gov/opinions/coa/current/opa081991-0818.pdf
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