Seeing Like an Islamic State: Shari‘a and Political Power in Sudan

Islamic law, or shari‘a, has been incorporated into the legal systems of many states. In much of the existing literature, this process is understood as part of the colonial and postcolonial state's attempt to render law legible—that is, codified, standardized, and abstract. In this article, I show how some state actors chose to move in the opposite direction, actively discouraging the transformation of shari‘a into a formal and codified system of law. Using the case of colonial and postcolonial Sudan, I argue that these actors viewed legal legibility as a threat to state power, recognizing the jurisgenerative potential of an informal and uncodified law.     

Forensic laboratory work in Burma (with special reference to the Office of the Chemical Examiner, Burma)

Burma is a country in Southeast Asia which is slightly smaller than Texas and has a population of 30 million people. The British colonial era brought the Chemical Examiner's laboratory to Burma. This was an all-purpose analytic laboratory. The forensic laboratory evolved within this structure as the need arose. The Medico-legal Division of this laboratory examined trace evidence, drugs, and body fluids of felons and there victims. Various aspects of investigation are discussed.     

Punishing Bodies,Securing the Nation: How Rule of Law Can Legitimate the Urbane Authoritarian State

Although authoritarian rule of law may seem an oxymoron, strategic reconfigurations of the “rule of law” can produce acceptance of law that observes procedure while erasing rights. By bringing into conjunction critical discourse theory and scholarship on the legal professions and political liberalism, this article shows how rulers can deploy rhetoric and legislation to produce derogations from the liberal content of rule of law while sustaining a state legitimacy built on claims to state realizations of rule of law. A close analysis of Singapore's Vandalism Act shows that silencing the critique of lawyers and constraining the power of judges has been crucial to a legitimation of the surveillance and criminalization of dissenters. The consolidation of state power effected via law and discourse might be seen as making the nation a notional panopticon—corporal punishment, even if conducted behind prison walls, becomes instructive public spectacle conveying the state's seeming omniscience and monopolistic command of law.     

Jury on stage: a common law play

Legal processes have a theatrical component to them. They offer an audience (the spectators) and actors (the legal parties, lawyers, as well as the jury and judge) who perform a play on the stage of the courtroom. In this paper we focus on the role of the jury, which appears to be simultaneously audience and actor. As audience, it assures that the power of the judge is limited. As actor, the jury is able to play its role in such a way as to incorporate social attitudes into the verdict. Exploring this theatrical component may shed new light on the debate whether juries are a “good” way of finding legal settlements. Further, it could indicate how legal processes are perceived by the public. As our line of argument builds on Adam Smith’s moral and legal philosophy, the analysis may also contribute to the understanding of one of the building blocks of Smith’s philosophy, namely the impartial spectator.     

Interpreting the <Emphasis Type="Italic">Scales of Justice</Emphasis>: Architecture,Symbolism and Semiotics of the Supreme Court of India

The neutrality of the art and architecture of courtrooms and courthouses has dominated the public perception in the Indian context. The courtroom design and the visual artistic elements present within these judicial places have very often been considered to be insignificant to the notions of law and justice that they reflect. As art and architecture present certain historical narratives, reflect political allegories and have significant impact on the perceptions of their viewers, they have critical socio-political ramifications. This makes it pertinent to explore them and investigate the paradox of their deployment and interpretation in today’s increasingly mediatized world. Through an ethnographic study of the Supreme Court of India, this paper interprets its art and architecture, and, the symbolism and semiotics reflected through them. Arguing against their neutrality and insignificance, the paper demonstrates how they reflect nationalism, certain ideologies and power-space dynamics. It further argues that they act as evidence of political metaphors related to justice, power and democracy. With a conversation between law, architecture and semiotics, the paper investigates the historical and spatial dimensions of its architecture and artistic elements. Mapping the Court’s architectural elements, I examine how the visual representation of ‘justice as virtue’ finds translation in its design through transfer of certain images, including the image of the ‘scales of justice’, into it, while absenting the notion of ‘justice as struggle’—to contemplate on how legal architecture gives evidence to the vexed relationship between law and justice and also of the break from the colonial past     

Leprosy,Legal Mobilization,and the Public Sphere in Japan and South Korea

This article addresses the question of what gets transmitted in cross‐national diffusion and why. It does so by analyzing the spread of rights‐based activism from Japanese to South Korean leprosy (Hansen's disease) survivors in the 2000s. Previous scholarship would predict extensive diffusion of mobilizing frames and tactics, especially since Korean lawyers learned an effective legal mobilization template while working with Japanese lawyers to win compensation for Korean leprosy survivors mistreated by Japanese colonial authorities before 1945. Yet the form of subsequent activism by Korean leprosy survivors for redress from the Korean government differed from the original Japanese model. This case suggests the need for scope conditions on theories about isomorphism and the agency of brokers. In particular, it draws attention to how the structure of a country's public sphere—and especially its legal profession, news media, and activist sector—affects the feasibility of imported innovations related to activism and legal mobilization.     

Just-in-Time Justice: Globalization and the Changing Character of Law,Order, and Power

This article examines how economic globalization has dialectically interacted with the nation-state and legal order to facilitate the production of “just-in-time justice”—the increasingly flexible character of law, order, and power. Utilizing Chambliss’s analytic strategy, particularly his dialectical approach to lawmaking, I first examine the relationship between the global social order, economic globalization, and the changing architecture of nation-states. I then explore ways that the legal order has been flexibilized, including the creation of “states of exception,” the privatization of social control functions of the state, the development of transnational spaces for governance, and the widespread use of surveillance. My analysis of these transformations suggests that the greatest danger in the contemporary moment may be what we do not know, what is hidden from public accountability, beyond the public gaze. Importantly, this analysis also highlights that law continues to matter—or else there would not be such a press to ensure its disappearance.     

Sedition: a slippery slope argument devised to protect the state’s magnates

The Indian law on sedition is a hangover from India’s colonial past. It was devised by Lord Thomas Babington Macaulay and was incorporated into the Indian Penal Code in 1870, used as a tool primarily to oppress. The objective of this article is to conduct a critical analysis of the meaning and use of laws against sedition. The research question is that, since scandalum magnatum apparently did not deal with how these words actually caused the problem division, what might be the underlying reasoning for anti-sedition laws. Argument tries to show that sedition is an attack by exposure on the state’s secret administrative processes. Sedition appears to have been based on a judicially applied slippery slope argument against exposing the secret machinations of the state’s magnates. There is a strong inference that the state’s magnates are deeply afraid of exposure, as their power rests only on the conventional administrative procedures of sinecures. Sedition is a crime designed to frighten those who might understand and then criticise either publicly or privately the state’s more feeble methods of governance.     

Immigration,intermarriage and the changing face of Europe in the post war period

In this article we compare the propensity to intermarry of various migrant groups and their children who settled in Germany, France, England, Belgium and the Netherlands in the post-war period, using a wide range of available statistical data. We try to explain different intermarriage patterns within the framework of Alba and Nee's assimilation theory and pay special attention to the role of religion, colour and colonial background. We therefore compare colonial with non colonial migrants and within these categories between groups with ‘European’ (Christian) and non-European (Islam, Hinduism) religions. First of all, religion appears to be an important variable. Migrants whose faith has no tradition in Western Europe intermarry at a much lower rate than those whose religious backgrounds correspond with those that are common in the country of settlement. The rate of ethnic endogamous marriages in Western Europe are highest in Hindu and Muslim communities, often regardless if they came as guest workers or colonial migrants. Whereas differences in religion diminish the propensity to intermarry, colour or ‘racial’ differences on the other hand seem to be less important. This is largely explained by the pre-migration socialisation. Furthermore, the paper argues that the attention to institutions, as rightly advocated by Richard Alba and Victor Nee, needs a more refined and layered elaboration. Institutions, often as barriers to intermarriage, do not only emanate from the receiving society, but also—be it less formalized—within migrant communities. Especially religions and family systems, but also organized nationalist feelings, can have a profound influence on how migrants think about endogamy. Finally, strong pressures to assimilate, often through institutionalized forms of discrimination and stigmatization, not only produce isolation and frustrate assimilation (with resulting low intermarriage rates), but can also stimulate assimilation by 'passing' mechanisms. These factors, together with a more comparative perspective, are not completely ignored in the new assimilation theory, but—as this study of Western European intermarriage patterns stresses—deserve to be included more systematically in historical and social scientist analyses.     

Immigration,intermarriage and the changing face of Europe in the post war period

In this article we compare the propensity to intermarry of various migrant groups and their children who settled in Germany, France, England, Belgium and the Netherlands in the post-war period, using a wide range of available statistical data. We try to explain different intermarriage patterns within the framework of Alba and Nee's assimilation theory and pay special attention to the role of religion, colour and colonial background. We therefore compare colonial with non colonial migrants and within these categories between groups with ‘European’ (Christian) and non-European (Islam, Hinduism) religions. First of all, religion appears to be an important variable. Migrants whose faith has no tradition in Western Europe intermarry at a much lower rate than those whose religious backgrounds correspond with those that are common in the country of settlement. The rate of ethnic endogamous marriages in Western Europe are highest in Hindu and Muslim communities, often regardless if they came as guest workers or colonial migrants. Whereas differences in religion diminish the propensity to intermarry, colour or ‘racial’ differences on the other hand seem to be less important. This is largely explained by the pre-migration socialisation. Furthermore, the paper argues that the attention to institutions, as rightly advocated by Richard Alba and Victor Nee, needs a more refined and layered elaboration. Institutions, often as barriers to intermarriage, do not only emanate from the receiving society, but also—be it less formalized—within migrant communities. Especially religions and family systems, but also organized nationalist feelings, can have a profound influence on how migrants think about endogamy. Finally, strong pressures to assimilate, often through institutionalized forms of discrimination and stigmatization, not only produce isolation and frustrate assimilation (with resulting low intermarriage rates), but can also stimulate assimilation by 'passing' mechanisms. These factors, together with a more comparative perspective, are not completely ignored in the new assimilation theory, but—as this study of Western European intermarriage patterns stresses—deserve to be included more systematically in historical and social scientist analyses.     

奥尔森的国家起源理论

国家起源理论中的契约理论只是对某种国家形态及功能的事后正当化论说，无法成为一种对国家起源的解释性理论。在奥尔森的理论中，国家是由固定下来的匪帮转化来的，专制国家权力的产生是拥有暴力或私人权力的主体以自身利益最大化的方式运用私人权力的结果。国家权力的运作，无论是征收赋税还是提供公共物品，都取决于权力拥有者自身利益最大化的逻辑。不同的共容利益导致了民主与专制政府的不同行为模式。相对于契约理论，奥尔森的理论是一种更富解释力且更为简约从而更具竞争优势的理论。     

Enemies and Citizens of the State: Die Boeremag as the Face of Postapartheid Otherness

This examination is a case study analysis of the Mail & Guardian’s news coverage surrounding the ongoing trial of members of the separatist group, die Boeremag. The 22 defendants stand accused of treason and 41 other criminal charges for the 2002 bombings of Soweto and conspiring to establish an independent Boer state. Utilizing a race critical lens, this analysis looks at these news representations of Afrikaner nationalists to glean insight into how law, race and racism can imbricate public understandings crime, specifically, in this case, domestic terrorism. It draws attention to the ways in which this fundamentalist group emerges as a repugnant Other and interrogates their roles within the “imagined” postapartheid South African community, the newspaper’s target audience. After explicating these dynamics, the paper concludes with a discussion of how this case study relates to practical dilemmas that stem from the utopian ideologies of reconciliation and nonracialism.     

Driving Legislators' Policy Preferences: Constituent Commutes and Gas Taxes

Understanding differential policy costs across constituencies, and how they link to legislators' policy preferences, can facilitate policy changes that solve pressing problems. We examine the role of policy costs on constituents by studying legislator support for taxing gasoline. Analysis of survey responses from US state legislators, as well as of their voting records, shows that legislators whose constituents would be most affected by an increased gas tax—those whose constituents have longer commutes—are more likely to oppose higher gas taxes. Separately estimating the impact of time spent driving to work versus using public transit shows that the effect of commute times comes from those who have long drives, not from those who ride public transit, highlighting how the policy costs to constituents is a major driver in legislators' considerations. We finish the article by discussing the implications of our findings for combating climate change and for understanding policy feedbacks.     

Food Fraud and the Partnership for a ‘Healthier’ America: A Case Study in State-Corporate Crime

At a moment of heightened public concern over food-related health issues, major corporations in the food industry have found their products and practices under scrutiny. Needing to be understood as socially responsible, these corporations have established partnerships with the state to construct a positive, proactive, and cooperative public image. One major public–private partnership that evolved from former First Lady Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move initiative—the Partnership for a Healthier America—serves as a case study in this paper, which analyzes the consequences and social harms perpetuated by a public health campaign bound by the imperative to maximize profit. By using trusted state actors to deliver accurate but deceptive claims about food companies’ commitment to public health, this public–private partnership actively misleads the public and potentially exacerbates public health challenges, warranting a skeptical revision of how we understand corporate social responsibility and neoliberal governance on issues of health and nutrition. As a form of fraud, these attempts to mislead the public go beyond the actions of public sector individuals or members of corporate boards, but are structurally incentivized by the legal rights, regulatory privileges, and profit-related incentives central to the modern corporate form. While conventional criminological research tends to underemphasize state and corporate harms, we make use of a critical criminological perspective to analyze state-corporate partnerships in the space between food industry practices and public health policy.     

Law and the political stakes of global crises: Lessons from development practice for a coronavirus world

Law has translated the coronavirus crisis into politically salient forms in people's lives, from states of emergency, to border closures, to mask mandates. Yet political theory work on these forms has focused on constraining arbitrary state power. In this paper, I try to broaden this focus. Substantively, I argue that policy and its implementation also matter to how we theorize the role of law in crises, in terms of how we understand the political power of society and its relationship to the state. Methodologically, I argue that thinking about law in this way is more than a complement to or replacement for thinking about constraints on arbitrariness. Rather, different forms of thinking about law and crisis should constantly be used to critique each other in order to pursue the sorts of legal innovations required by geomobile and interconnected crises. Given that the current pandemic and its broader consequences are still unfolding, I turn to development policy and practice to demonstrate the process and consequence of such ongoing critique in action. Studying rule of law reforms—including during the West African Ebola crisis—I show how practitioners continually reimagined law in ways that facilitated ongoing legal innovation that could adapt to the politics of the crisis.     

The law and the public's health: a study of infectious disease law in the United States

Law plays crucial roles in the field of public health, from defining the power and jurisdiction of health agencies, to influencing the social norms that shape individual behavior. Despite its importance, public health law has been neglected. Over a decade ago, the Institute of Medicine issued a report lamenting the state of public health administration, generally, and calling, in particular, for a revision of public health statutes. The Article examines the current state of public health law. To help create the conditions in which people can be healthy, public health law must reflect an understanding of how public health agencies work to promote health, as well as the political and social contexts in which these agencies operate. The authors first discuss three prevailing ways in which the determinants of health are conceptualized, and the political and social problems each model tends to create for public health efforts. The analysis then turns to the core functions of public health, emphasizing how law furthers public health work. The Article reports the results of a fifty-state survey of communicable disease control law, revealing that few states have systematically reformed their laws to reflect contemporary medical and legal developments. The Article concludes with specific guidelines for law reform.     

The meaning of “the public interest” in communications policy—part II: Its implementation in early broadcast law and regulation

For more than a half‐century, as the cornerstone of federal broadcasting and telecommunications policy, the public interest standard has always been subject to some debate. Questions have regularly been raised about its meaning and the extent of the authority it implies for regulation, particularly in the deregulatory environment of the 1980s and 1990s. Part I of this study demonstrated how a deep reading of the pre‐broadcasting state and federal regulatory history reveals that interpretations of the public interest standard that have emphasized broad, diverse, public service programming have entailed a misunderstanding of its real, underlying meaning. This part of the study shows how another definition—i.e., that the public would be best served by protecting economic viability and technological advancement for private industry broadcasters—developed as the predominant doctrine before adoption of the Radio Act of 1927 and Communications Act of 1934, and how that theme came to be the applied interpretation of the public interest during the first two decades of broadcast regulation.     

The Rule of Law and Authoritarian Rule: Legal Politics in Sudan

Mark Fathi, Massoud . 2013 . Law's Fragile State: Colonial, Authoritarian, and Humanitarian Legacies in Sudan . Cambridge University Press. Pp. xxii + 265. $109.99 cloth, $34.99 paper. Does the rule of law guarantee peace and democracy, as so many people in the development and governance field believe? What are the historical and sociocultural conditions that shape the way rule of law mechanisms work in practice? Mark Massoud's monograph tracing the changing dimensions of the rule of law in Sudan from its colonial period to the present offers an important perspective on these questions, casting doubt on the simple argument that the rule of law produces democracy and peace. Instead, he shows how colonial and authoritarian rulers used the rule of law to consolidate power and legitimate their rule. In Law's Fragile State: Colonial, Authoritarian, and Humanitarian Legacies in Sudan, Massoud develops the concept of legal politics, arguing that the way the rule of law works varies with the political system in which it is embedded. He concludes that the forms of legal politics that reinforce the power and authority of legal institutions are more likely to sustain an authoritarian state than to bring democratic rule. His analysis is a valuable caution to those who promote the rule of law as the salvation for all. Taking a sociolegal perspective, he shows how it works in practice.     

Positivists and Buddhists: The Rise and Fall of Anglo-Burmese Ecclesiastical Law

This article describes and compares English and Burmese approaches to the kgal establishment of religion. Between 1886 and 1942 the two approaches crossbred to produce a body of case law known as Buddhist ecclesiastical law. However, after 1920 the colonial government radically changed its policy toward Buddhism. The repercussions of this change continue to affect Burma.     

(Un)Authorized: A Study on the Regulation of Street Vending in Latin America

This article offers an examination of the official rules that participate in the organization of street vending activities in Latin American cities. It does so by explaining the legal assemblages that serve to define how, where, and by whom certain Latin American public spaces may be occupied, and by empirically illustrating the way in which the legal status of street vendors—that is, whether or not they are willing or able to get official recognition to work in these public spaces—affects the way they use and occupy the urban landscape. The information gathered here suggests that securing access to official permission to work on the streets does significantly affect vendors' locations as well as their working modalities. The subsequent analysis also illustrates a significant relationship between vendors' legal status and specific interactions with urban authorities and other actors. These findings suggest that, although law cannot prevent the unauthorized occupation of public spaces for commercial purposes, it could certainty avert the reproduction of other illegal practices and, perhaps most importantly, protect the urban poor from the vulnerability they face before state and nonstate violence.