Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 January 2012
Professional attorneyship emerged in the Ottoman Empire in tandem with the consolidation of the Nizamiye (“regular”) court system during the late 19th century. This article analyzes the emergence of an Ottoman legal profession, emphasizing two developments. First, the Nizamiye courts advanced a formalist legal culture, exhibited, inter alia, by the expansion of legal procedure. Whereas the pre-19th century court of law was highly accessible to lay litigants, the proceduralization of court proceedings in the 19th century limited the legibility of the judicial experience to legal experts, rendering legal counseling almost indispensible in civil and criminal litigation. Second, the reformers made efforts to render state-granted legal license a sign of professional competence, presenting a formal distinction between the old “agents” (vekils), who lacked formal legal training, and the professional “trial attorneys” (dava vekils). In practice, however, lawyers of both categories had to adapt to the Nizamiye formalist culture.
1 For the emergence of the Nizamiye courts and their institutional structure, see Bingöl, Sedat, Tanzimat Devrinde Osmanlı’da Yargı Reformu: Nizâmiye Mahkemelerinin Kuruluşu ve İşleyisi 1840–1876 (Eskişehir, Turkey: Anadolu Üniversitesi, 2004)Google Scholar; Ekinci, Ekrem Buğra, Osmanlı Mahkemeleri: Tanzimat ve Sonrası (Istanbul: Arı Sanat, 2004)Google Scholar; and Demirel, Fatmagül, Adliye Nezareti: Kuruluşu ve Faaliyetleri, 1876–1914 (Istanbul: Boğaziçi Üniversitesi, 2007)Google Scholar. For a sociolegal history of the Nizamiye courts, see Rubin, Avi, Ottoman Nizamiye Courts: Law and Modernity (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
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34 The exam included eight questions on the Mecelle, three questions on the land commercial law, four questions on the Code of Commerce, three questions on the Criminal Code, and eight to ten general questions on the Law of Maritime Commerce and the procedural codes. Ceride-i Mehakim, no. 76 (1881): 601.
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43 Agmon, Family and Court, 194. To the best of my knowledge, this is currently the only study that systematically analyzes litigation in the reformed Şeriat courts.
44 Ibid., 123.
45 Ibid., 175.
46 Ceride-i Mehakim, no. 773 (1894): 11488–489.
47 In this period, efendi was a general title of respect, a gentleman, whereas bey was assigned to dignitaries of various sorts.
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55 Ceride-i Mehakim, no. 615 (1891): 8967–969; no. 616 (1891): 8975–978.
56 For the complete protocol of the case, see Ceride-i Mehakim, no. 466 (1888): 5278–286; no. 467 (1888): 5295–301.
57 Ibid., 5300–5301.
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