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On Judicial Review in Islamic Law

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 April 2024

David S. Powers
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Abstract

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Classical Islamic law apparently constitutes an exception to the finding that legal systems in complex societies invariably possess hierarchical appellate structures. The prevailing wisdom among Islamicists for over a half-century has asserted that there are no appellate structures in Islamic law, that the decision of a judge is final and irrevocable, and that a judgment may not be reversed under any circumstances. The exceptional nature of Islamic law has been explained by Martin Shapiro as a function of the absence of hierarchy in the Islamic religious community. In this article, I argue that Shapiro has been poorly served by Islamicist scholarship. On the basis of a reexamination of Islamic legal theory and an analysis of 14th-century Islamic court practice, I demonstrate that a judicial decision was reversible by the issuing judge himself, albeit under limited and precisely defined conditions; that hierarchical organization was a regular feature of Muslim polities; that the court of the chief judge of the capital city served as a court of review for the decisions of local judges; and that Islamic law also developed a unique, nonhierarchical system of successor review. My conclusions will be of interest both to Islamicists and to social scientists who study the relationship between judicial institutions and social organization.

Type
Appeals in Islamic Law
Information
Law & Society Review , Volume 26 , Issue 2 , 1992 , pp. 315 - 341
Copyright
Copyright © 1992 by The Law and Society Association.

Footnotes

I would like to thank Martin Shapiro, Brinkley Messick, Baber Johansen, Frank Munger, and two anonymous readers for their comments on earlier drafts of this article. All translations of Quran passages are based on A. J. Arberry, The Koran Interpreted (New York: Macmillan, 1955).

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