This is my foreword to the Emory International Law Review's symposium, "Sharia, Family, and Democracy: Religious Norms and Family Law in Pluralistic Democratic States." The symposium offers comparative analysis of pluralistic family developments in the West and in Africa, thereby engaging debates over questions like the extent to which parties can resort to religious family law systems separate from the family laws of the state.
Witte, Jr., John (2011) studied this question.