The Anthropology of Justice: Law as Culture in Islamic Society

by Lawrence Rosen

In this first full-scale study of the operations of a modern Islamic court of law in the Arabic-speaking world, the author examines the cultural foundations of judicial discretion. He shows how the analysis of legal systems requires an understanding of the concepts and relationships encountered in everyday life. Using the Islamic courts of Morocco as its substantive base, he demonstrates how the shaping of facts in a court of law, the use of local experts, and the organization of the judicial structure all contribute to the reliance on local concepts and personnel to inform the range of judicial discretion. By drawing comparisons with Anglo-American law, the author demonstrates that in both societies, it is necessary to view law as integral to culture and culture as indispensable to law.

Genres: Anthropology, Law, Islam

117 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1989

About the author

Lawrence Rosen is the Cromwell Professor of Anthropology at Princeton University and adjunct professor of law at Columbia Law School and a 2005 Carnegie Scholar. He is both an anthropologist and a lawyer. His main interests are in the relation between cultural concepts and their implementation in social and legal relationships

He is the author of The Culture of Islam; Varieties of Muslim Experience; Bargaining For Reality; and Two Arabs, a Berber, and a Jew; all also published by the University of Chicago Press.

He teaches courses on law and anthropology, comparative religious systems, the American Indian and the law, and the theory of cultural systems. He received the Presidential Distinguished Teaching Award in 1997 and was a Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Scholar for 1997-98.

Reviews

[Jack Alexander Goilo · Rating 4 out of 5]

pretty interesting, though I think I only really got a third of it on first reading