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.     

The Middlemen: The Legal Profession,the Rule of Law,and Authoritarian Regimes

Scholars are increasingly interested in exploring ways to strengthen the rule of law in authoritarian states—especially when deeper political reforms are not attainable. The article contributes to this discussion by revisiting the story of the emergence of the so‐called socialist legality in the communist states of Eastern Europe. Using the historical record from Poland, the author demonstrates a previously unnoticed, yet pivotal, role of legal professionals in facilitating socialist legality's rise to prominence. Using the lenses of Pierre Bourdieu's theory of fields, the article chronicles the evolving dynamic between the legal profession, the authoritarian regime, and society. These observations challenge conventional explanations of the emergence of the rule of law in nondemocratic conditions.     

Sharia Courts and Muslim Personal Law in India: Intersecting Legal Regimes

In July 2005, a Delhi lawyer filed suit with the Supreme Court of India seeking to ban “sharia courts” (dar ul qazas) and Islamic legal opinions, arguing that they constitute a “parallel judicial system” that undermines the state's legal institutions. The Supreme Court decided in 2014 that dar ul qazas are not parallel but appropriate alternative forums. In this article, I analyze several divorce cases in Delhi and Patna dar ul qazas to show that, rather than being alternative or parallel, dar ul qazas intersect with state courts. Attending to this intersection, I argue, has implications for how we understand legal pluralism, secularism, and the relation between them. Specifically, I argue that because of how cases travel between dar ul qazas and state courts, dar ul qazas help to consolidate the oppositions between religious and secular law, kin relations, and rights upon which secularism relies.     

Contesting Legality in Authoritarian Contexts: Food Safety,Rule of Law and China's Networked Public Sphere

Since the introduction of the Internet, China's networked public sphere has become a critical site in which various actors compete to shape public opinion and promote or forestall legal and political change. This paper examines how members of an online public, the Tianya Forum, conceptualized and discussed law in relation to a specific event, the 2008 Sanlu milk scandal. Whereas previous studies suggest the Chinese state effectively controls citizens' legal consciousness via propaganda, this analysis shows that the construction of legality by the Tianya public was not a top‐down process, but a complex negotiation involving multiple parties. The Chinese state had to compete with lawyers and outspoken media to frame and interpret the scandal for the Tianya public and it was not always successful in doing so. Data show further how the online public framed the food safety incident as indicative of fundamental problems rooted in China's political regime and critiqued the state's instrumental use of law.     

The Politics of Rule of Law Reform: From Delegation to Autonomy

How can we understand the delegation of power and authority – for example, from a polity to an administrator - in a world of fragmented governance? In this paper, I introduce the practices of contemporary ‘rule of law’ and ‘governance’ reform, which reframe this question in politically powerful ways. These practices are increasingly important in development contexts, and beyond. Practitioners begin with the assumption that some sort of administration occurs in the development contexts in which they work. They then focus on how to convene a political community in which to embed – and potentially legitimate - that administration. They thereby reconfigure the question of delegation into one of autonomy – or managing the extent to and ways in which the administrative legal system self-produces. In doing so, I argue that contemporary rule of law practitioners wield constitutional power under the rubric of workaday administrative reform. At the same time, they efface their political accountability.     

Courts, Constitutions, and Labor Politics in England and America: A Study of the Constitutive Power of Law

For most of the 19th century, the labor movements of England and America seemed to be developing along similar lines. Then, in the decades around the turn of the century, both movements were embroiled in a common battle over the political soul of trade unionism. In England, the champions of broad, class-based social and industrial reforms prevailed. In the United States, they lost, and the winners were the voluntarists, who held that labor should steer clear of politics as much as possible. This article suggests that the key reasons for the divergence lie not in the sociology of the working class or labor movement, so much as in the character of the state and polity and the lessons trade unionists drew from experiences in those arenas. The difference between judicial supremacy in the United States and parliamentary supremacy in England combined with other differences in the two nations'forms of government to produce sharply contrasting lessons about the value of state-based reforms.     

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.     

依法执政:社会主义政党政治现代化的必然要求

依法执政已成为当代政党政治现代化的一个重要标志.党的十六大报告提出:执政党要依法执政.这是历史经验的总结,也是社会主义政党政治走向现代化的必然要求.依法执政有助于实现人民当家作主的权利;充分发挥多党合作与政治协商的功能;正确处理以党治国、党政不分的问题;更好地接受人民的监督.     

The Rule of Law in Fragile States: Dictatorship,Collapse, and the Politics of Religion in Post-Colonial Somalia

The fate of the rule of law in fragile states rests in religious politics. Three defining periods of Somali politics illustrate this argument. First is the authoritarian regime of Mohamed Siad Barre in Somalia (1969–1991). This dictatorship used religion to rule by law. The regime executed religious leaders for disagreeing with the government's interpretation of Islam. Second is the rise of Islamic courts in Mogadishu, Somalia's capital city (1991–2007). The Islamic courts apprehended criminals, expelled warlords, and provided spaces for Somalis to resolve disputes peacefully. Third is the breakaway of Somaliland (1991–present). Somaliland has advanced Islamic legal principles to build peace and constitutional law. Taken together, these three periods demonstrate how religious politics transform law and society.