Arab States and the Role of Islam in the International Criminal Court

This article assesses the various disagreements between Arab and western states that surfaced at the 1998 Rome Conference and Preparatory Commission. It also discusses the relationship between state repression and cultural adaptation by examining the undeveloped domestic criminal systems of Arab states and the ambiguous role played by shariah (Islamic law) in the constitutions of many of them. It argues two main points: that more mutual accommodation will be needed to resolve these and future conflicts between Islamic and international law; and that such conflicts between the ICC and Arab states expose the need for further cultural adaptation to the ICC Statute. It is out of this process of cultural adaptation that the relationship between Islam and serious international crimes will evolve.     

Indians 78, Washington State 0: Stories about Indians and the Law

In the 1970s Washington State lost a series of legal cases related to Native Americans. These cases exemplify the need for knowledge of federal Indian law-but such knowledge, out of context, is insufficient. Key aspects of federal Indian law are hard to accept because of conflicting stories that Americans already believe. The authors discuss the importance of stories and review commonly believed stories that block acceptance of federal Indian law. They then discuss basic principles of Indian law and distill four questions to help determine tribal jurisdiction. The authors review the Marshal trilogy—three Supreme Court cases that set the foundations of modern Native American law—and show how the legal principles play out in an analysis of three contemporary court cases.     

Economic Threats or Societal Turmoil? Understanding Preferences for Authoritarian Political Systems

Why do some individuals prefer to be governed in an authoritarian political system? One intuitive answer is that citizens prefer authoritarian rule when the economy and society are in turmoil. These are common explanations for democratic backsliding, and the emergence and success of authoritarian leaders in the twentieth century. Which of these explanations better explains preferences for authoritarian rule? Both types of threat coincide in small samples and high-profile cases, creating inferential problems. I address this by using three waves of World Values Survey data to look at individual-level preferences for different forms of authoritarian government. Using multiple macroeconomic and societal indicators, I find that economic threats, especially increasing income inequality, better explain preferences for authoritarian government. I conclude with implications for understanding the emergence of support for authoritarianism in fledgling democracies.     

Money,Mortgages, and the Conquest of America

In colonial America, land acquired new liquidity when it became liable for debts. Though English property law maintained a firm distinction between land and chattel for centuries, in the American colonies, the boundary between the categories of real and personal property began to disintegrate. There, the novelty of easy foreclosure and consequent easy alienation of land made it possible for colonists to obtain credit, using land as a security. However, scholars have neglected the first instances in which a newly unconstrained practice of mortgage foreclosure appeared—the transactions through which colonists acquired land from indigenous people in the first place. In this article, I explore these early transactions for land, which took place across fundamental differences between colonists’ and native communities’ conceptions of money, land, and exchange itself. I describe how difference and dependence propelled the growth of the early American contact economy to make land into real estate, or the fungible commodity on the speculative market that it remains today.