The Rule of Law in the Middle East and the Islamic World

Abstract

This work grew out of a series of lectures that were delivered over a two-year period between 1996 and 1998 at the Centre of Islamic and Middle Eastern Law (CIMEL) at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London, on the genera] subject of the rule of law in the Middle East and Islamic countries. Subsequently, materials were added dealing particularly with issues relating to human rights law. The contributors to this work are a combination of legal academics, human rights activists, lawyers and judges, who hale from various countries in the Arab world, Iran, the United States, Great Britain and Germany. There are a total of fourteen separate chapters, of varying length and quality. The book is not lengthy - including notes and authors’ biographies, it is 180 pages long. The average length of each chapter is between ten and fifteen pages. Despite the diversity of countries surveyed, all the essays are concerned with generic questions regarding the rule of law, whether in a theoretical sense, viz., whether the notion that legitimate governmental action is limited to those acts that are deemed lawful by a pre-existing set or rules, or in a practical sense, viz., assuming that the formal legal regime of a given state recognizes the rule of law in a theoretical sense, whether the coercive apparatus of the state in fact recognizes legal limitations on its conduct. Perhaps the most interesting (it is certainly the most lengthy, at 35 pages), and most important, essay in this work is the very fiit one, authored by Adel Omar Sherif, an Egyptian judge, wherein the author provides a digest of the landmark decisions of the Egyptian Supreme Constitutional Court. While the work can be criticized for taking on the appearance of a mere survey of decisions, without taking a critical perspective to the Court’s precedents, it is nonetheless a very valuable contribution for those lawyers and scholars who cannot read Arabic but nonetheless wish to gain insight into Egypt’s legal culture. The modest task of relating the decisions of Egypt’s Supreme Constitutional Court is especially important given the cliches regarding the absence of effective judicial institutions in the Arab world. Sherifs contribution effectively dispels that myth. His article reveals the Egyptian Supreme Constitutional Court to be a vibrant institution that takes its constitutional duties seriously, and discharges those duties with integrity, and when it finds that the government has acted unlawfully, it will strike down the offensive legislation, or rule against the government ...