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Justice and Tyranny, Law and the State in the Middle East

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 September 2009

Charles Lindholm
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Extract

In his influential work, Max Weber argued that the Middle East was fatally hampered in the development of a modern civil society by the existence of arbitrary Qadi justice, based on the personalized decisions of a judiciary reliant only on case law for precedent and lacking any form of rational organization. This individualistic judicial structure (or lack of structure) allowed authoritarian regimes to subvert the courts for their own purposes, destroying the possibility of the development of an autonomous citizenry; meanwhile, in Europe the evolution of a rationally codified legal system acted as a check on governmental tyranny and provided a space for the evolution of independent civic organizations.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society , Volume 9 , Issue 3 , November 1999 , pp. 375 - 388
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Asiatic Society 1999

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