2023 Theses Bachelor's

Religion and International Private Law: How Faith Impacts Global Child Abduction Outcomes

Safiry, Ryan W.

When selecting treaty partners, states conduct meticulous evaluations of other countries and their domestic institutions to ensure compliance. In the context of private international law and family law, this perceived fairness of the potential partner states’ legal systems serves as a vital indicator for countries that seek effective partnerships. Is religion also an intermediary to this end? This study investigates the potential impact of religion on collaboration outcomes between countries by analyzing data from partnerships formed under the Hague Child Abduction Convention, building on the work of Efrat and Newman (2016). The analysis incorporates logit experiments, survival analysis, and an interview with a case attorney to substantiate the expectation of an effect of religious affiliation and state religiosity on the propensity to collaborate, providing compelling evidence that countries with identical religious affiliations are more likely to cooperate, that states with highly-intertwined religious and legal institutions exhibit decreased receptivity to collaboration, and that Muslim countries may be less likely to collaborate even after joining the Convention.