Cultural Intolerance and Aversion to Foreign Judgments in the American States

Abstract Is there hostility toward things foreign in the US legal system? Existing work examines the success of foreign litigants in American courts and fails to find clear evidence for the existence of xenophobia. We propose to shift the debate toward the legislative framework underlying transnational litigation. Specifically, this study examines the willingness to facilitate the enforcement of foreign judgments through state legislation. Our statistical analysis finds that cultural attitudes do matter: where society exhibits intolerance and xenophobia, foreign judgments are less welcome. By demonstrating how cultural attitudes shape the law, this study contributes to the debate on the social origins of legal norms, and also advances the analysis of legal-system interaction in the age of globalization.