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Plaintiff Larry William Cortinas brought this action against the California prison system, alleging a violation of his Eighth Amendment and Fourteenth Amendment rights. The Plaintiff alleged that medical staff at the prison refused him treatment and medication for his rheumatoid arthritis and hepatitis C because he was Muslim. The Plaintiff filed a motion for default judgment. The District Court determined that the Plaintiff's allegations were sufficient to demonstrate that he would be entitled to relief under the Eighth Amendment and the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

Plaintiff Jeffrey Coleman filed an action against the Virginia Department of Corrections (VDOC) alleging violations of his constitutional rights under the First Amendment, the Eighth Amendment, the Fourteenth Amendment, and RLUIPA. The Plaintiff claimed that these rights had been violated in over 12 policies, including the policy that limited his purchase of prayer oil to once a week, a grooming policy that prevented him from growing a beard, and a CD policy limiting inmates’ purchase of spoken religious word CDs to a single vendor. The District Court dismissed all claims against the Respondent except for claims related to the CD policy, which the District Court determined was not related to any legitimate penological interest.

Appellant Amina Aden appealed her contempt citations and sentences, contending that they violated the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA).  During the Appellant’s criminal trial for providing material support to a foreign terrorist organization, the U.S. District Court for the District of Minnesota cited the Appellant for criminal contempt for repeatedly failing to stand when the court convened and recessed as required by pretrial order. This Court found that the lower court erred in evaluating the Appellant’s former contentions that standing at these times would violate her religious belief. The Court found that in the RFRA context, the district court erred by evaluating the orthodoxy and sophistication of the Appellant’s belief, instead of simply evaluating whether her practice was rooted in sincerely held religious belief.  Because the district court only applied a First Amendment analysis, it did not apply an RFRA analysis that evaluated whether the pretrial order was the least restrictive means to achieve a compelling government interest.  Therefore, the Court vacated the contempt citations and remanded to the district court to evaluate whether the pretrial order was the least restrictive means to further that or other compelling interests.

Phillip Jean-Laurent brought an action against South Carolina prison officials for allegedly violating his First Amendment right to the free exercise of his Islamic religious tenets and the Eighth Amendment. Specifically, the plaintiff claimed that the respondents prevented his attendance at Islamic religious services during Ramadan as retaliation for him using the law library, and deprived him of evening and morning meals required by Muslim religious exercises during Ramadan, in preparation for fasting during daylight hours. The District Court found that the respondents properly answered the interrogatories as to the policy of forbidding the plaintiff to attend prayer services, but that the respondents did not properly answer questions in document requests regarding the plaintiff's and other Muslim prisoners’ ability to secure Ramadan morning meals.

Chapters on nominate contracts (endowment, sales, options, barter/ mu‘āwaḍa, hire and lease, partnerships -shirka, muzāra‘a, musāqāt, muḍāraba-, reward/ju‘āla, deposit, fungible and non-fungible loan, agency, financial and personal guaranty, assignment, settlement, pledge, gift), shuf‘a, wills, inheritance, marriage and divorce, mahr, and alimony took almost all of its substance from prominent Shi’i fiqh treatises. Other chapters (classification of properties, easement, usufruct, general rules of obligations and contracts, nationality, registration of civil status, domicile, engagement, guardianship, and evidence) are mainly influenced by Swiss and French Civil Codes and Swiss Code of Obligations.