According to the “German justice: Outcry as judge invokes Qur’an” case, the German judge applied the Qur’an as the ground to reject a divorce plea from a Moroccan woman. From my point of view, it is unreasonable that the judge applied the Qur’an to support her judgment in German regardless whether the claimant has a Moroccan descent or not. The judge seemed to neglect the fact that the Moroccan woman and her children were suffering the corporal punishment and threats from her husband. In addition, the judge showed “over-respect” for the Islamic culture. It is true that legislation has a strong interaction with the culture and local customs and the religion law is another picture (which is allowed to operate alongside or outside of the regular justice system).

Therefore, here comes the question: what is the function of law? Does the law impact the culture or custom or does the culture impact the law? In my opinion, initially, culture and local custom play a significant role in the formulation of the law. However, with the development of the society and jurisprudence, law becomes to be a major factor that might convert the culture and local custom. As to be mentioned in the class, “prescribe ”, “describe” and “proscribe” are the three functions of law. In the initial stage of the society, what the law “prescribes”, “describes” and “proscribes” might have a strong reference to the culture and local custom. For example, in ancient china, the Confucian culture had a