From time to time, American courts, which are relatively isolated from foreign influence, consider “civilized standards” and “views that have been expressed by other nations” to support their decisions. Even though the search for solutions to domestic problems beyond national borders is still a novelty for the US judiciary, increasing communications between international and domestic law and the ongoing globalization of the latter require lawyers around the world to study foreign judicial practice and consider it when resolving domestic legal disputes.

In recent years, several Supreme Court Justices of the U.S have looked to the decisions of foreign and international courts for guidance in interpreting the U.S. Constitution. This practice …show more content…
Most recently, Justice Scalia’s Roper dissent contended that “the basic premise of the Court’s argument—that American law should conform to the laws of the rest of the world ought to be rejected out of hand.” Arguing that the Court’s use of foreign law was inconsistent and unprincipled, as shown by the deviation between American and foreign case law on the exclusionary rule, church‐state relations, and abortion, Justice Scalia concluded that “the Court should either profess its willingness to reconsider all these matters in light of the views of foreigners, or else it should cease putting forth foreigners’ views as part of the reasoned basis of its decisions. To invoke alien law when it agrees with one’s own thinking, and ignore it otherwise, is not reasoned decision making, but …show more content…
Constitution is not so much that the law is foreign, but that it is modern. He would (and does) object equally to citations of modern American legal trends to inform constitutional interpretation.

Justice Scalia's Modernist Argument Against Foreign Law in Constitutional Interpretation
But what if one is not an originalist? Although he did not admit it during his discussion with Justice Breyer, in many areas of constitutional interpretation, even Justice Scalia makes no effort to square his views with the original understanding.
For example, Justice Scalia has written important First Amendment opinions--such as the 1992 decision in R.A.V. v. City of St. Paul, which invalidated a hate-speech ordinance--that appear to expand free speech protection well beyond what the framers envisioned. (Perhaps an argument could be fashioned that James Madison and his contemporaries held the view reflected in R.A.V., but Justice Scalia's opinion in that case made no effort to present such an