Hostname: page-component-77c89778f8-n9wrp Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-17T03:02:01.089Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Ideals and Practices in the Rule of Law: An Essay on Legal Politics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 December 2018

Mark Fathi Massoud
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This essay responds to the three commentators in the symposium on my book, Law's Fragile State, by describing the sociolegal study of the rule of law as an investigation into both a set of ideals (the rule of law as a normative question) and a set of practices (the rule of law as an empirical question). Studying the rule of law involves understanding the contingent nature of its ideals as well as investigating the actual work that lawyers, judges, state officials, aid workers, activists, and others have done in specific contexts to promote legal remedies to social or political ills. These overlapping layers of the study of the rule of law—ideals and practices, normative and empirical—provide a sociolegal framework for understanding the successes and failures of legal work and, ultimately, how citizens experience state power in democratic and nondemocratic societies alike.

Type
Review Section
Information
Law & Social Inquiry , Volume 41 , Issue 2 , Spring 2016 , pp. 489 - 501
Copyright
Copyright © American Bar Foundation, 2016 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Abel, Richard L., and Lewis, Philip S. C., eds. 1996. Lawyers in Society: An Overview. Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Blumenthal, Susanna. 2006. Deviance of the Will: Policing the Boundary of Testamentary Freedom in Nineteenth Century America. Harvard Law Review 119:960–1035.Google Scholar
Campbell, Robert. 1885. Lectures on Jurisprudence or the Philosophy of Positive Law by the Late John Austin of the Inner Temple, Barrister at Law, 5th ed. London: John Murray.Google Scholar
Chayes, Abram. 1976. The Role of the Judge in Public Law Litigation. Harvard Law Review 89 (7): 1281–1316.Google Scholar
Chua, Lynette J. 2014. Mobilizing Gay Singapore: Rights and Resistance in an Authoritarian State. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.Google Scholar
Comaroff, John L., and Comaroff, Jean. 1997. Of Revelation and Revolution, Volume Two: The Dialectics of Modernity on a South African Frontier. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Cover, Robert M. 1986. Violence and the Word. Yale Law Journal 95:1601–29.Google Scholar
Dezalay, Yves, and Garth, Bryant G.. 2010. Asian Legal Revivals: Lawyers in the Shadow of Empire. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Dworkin, Ronald. 1986. Law's Empire. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Edelman, Lauren, B., Howard S., Erlanger, and John, Lande. 1996. Internal Dispute Resolution: The Transformation of Rights in the Workplace. Law & Society Review 27:497–534.Google Scholar
Ellett, Rachel. 2013. Pathways to Judicial Power in Transitional States: Perspectives from African Courts. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Ellett, Rachel.. 2016. Rethinking Law and State Building in Sub‐Saharan Africa. Law & Social Inquiry Google Scholar
Engel, David M. 1984. The Oven Bird's Song: Insiders, Outsiders, and Personal Injuries in an American Community. Law & Society Review 18 (4): 551–82.Google Scholar
Englund, Harri. 2004. Towards a Critique of Rights Talk in New Democracies: The Case of Legal Aid in Malawi. Discourse & Society 15 (5): 527–51.Google Scholar
Englund, Harri.. 2006. Prisoners of Freedom: Human Rights and the African Poor. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Epp, Charles. 1998. The Rights Revolution: Lawyers, Activists, and Supreme Courts in Comparative Perspective. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Ewick, Patricia, and Silbey, Susan S.. 1998. The Common Place of Law: Stories from Everyday Life. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Feeley, Malcolm M. 1979. The Process Is the Punishment: Handling Cases in a Lower Court. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.Google Scholar
Feeley, Malcolm M.. 1992. Hollow Hopes, Flypaper, and Metaphors. Law & Social Inquiry 17:745–60.Google Scholar
Feeley, Malcolm M.. 2010. The Personal and the Professional: Assessing the Ambivalent Commitment to Racial Justice in the United States. Law & Society Review 44 (3/4): 503–14.Google Scholar
Fluehr‐Lobban, Carolyn. 2012. Shari'a and Islamism in Sudan: Conflict, Law and Social Transformation. London: I.B. Tauris.Google Scholar
Foreign Policy. 2016. Fragile States Index. Available: http://foreignpolicy.com/fragile-states-2015 (last accessed February 1, 2016).Google Scholar
Fuller, Lon. 1964. The Morality of Law. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Galanter, Marc. 1974. Why the “Haves” Come Out Ahead: Speculations on the Limits of Legal Change. Law & Society Review 9:95–160.Google Scholar
Geertz, Clifford. 1973. The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Geertz, Clifford.. 1983. Local Knowledge: Fact and Law in Comparative Perspective. In Local Knowledge: Further Essays in Interpretive Anthropology, Geertz, C.. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Ghias, Shoaib. 2010. Miscarriage of Chief Justice: Judicial Power and the Legal Complex in Pakistan Under Musharraf. Law & Social Inquiry 35 (4): 985–1022.Google Scholar
Glendon, Mary Ann. 1991. Rights Talk: The Impoverishment of Political Discourse. New York: Free Press.Google Scholar
Gómez, Laura. 2010. Looking for Race in All the Wrong Places. Law & Society Review 46 (2): 221–45.Google Scholar
Gordon, Robert W. 2012. Critical Legal Histories Revisited: A Response. Law & Social Inquiry 37 (1): 200–15.Google Scholar
Green, Leslie. 2010 . Law as a Means. In The Hart‐Fuller Debate in the 21st Century, ed. Cane, P.. Oxford: Hart.Google Scholar
Hagan, John, and Rymond‐Richmond, Wenona. 2008. Darfur and the Crime of Genocide. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Halliday, Terence C., Karpik, Lucien, and Feeley, Malcolm M.. 2012. Fates of Political Liberalism in the British Post‐Colony: The Politics of the Legal Complex. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Hart, H. L. A. 1961. The Concept of Law. Oxford: Clarendon.Google Scholar
Hay, Douglas. 1975. Property, Authority, and the Criminal Law. In Albion's Fatal Tree: Crime and Society in Eighteenth Century England, ed. Hay, D., Linebaugh, P., Rule, J. G., Thompson, E. P., and Winslow, C., pp. 17–64. New York: Pantheon Press.Google Scholar
Horwitz, Morton J. 1977. The Rule of Law: An Unqualified Human Good? Yale Law Journal 86:561–66.Google Scholar
Hernandez, Wil. 2006. Henri Nouwen: A Spirituality of Imperfection. New York: Paulist Press.Google Scholar
Kaiser, Joshua, and Hagan, John. 2015. Gendered Genocide: The Socially Destructive Process of Genocidal Rape, Killing, and Rape in Darfur. Law & Society Review 49 (1): 69–107.Google Scholar
Kapiszewski, Diana, MacLean, Lauren M., and Read, Benjamin L.. 2015. Field Research in Political Science: Practices and Principles. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Kelsen, Hans. 1949. General Theory of Law and the State, trans. A. Wedberg. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Khalid, Mansour. 1990. The Government They Deserve: The Role of the Elite in Sudan's Political Evolution. London: Kegan Paul International.Google Scholar
Kleinfeld, Rachel. 2012. Advancing the Rule of Law Abroad: Next Generation Reform. Washington, DC: Carnegei Endowment for International Peace.Google Scholar
Klug, Heinz, and Merry, Sally Engle, eds. 2016. The New Legal Realism (Volume II): Studying Law Globally. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Google Scholar
Krygier, Martin. 2010 . The Hart‐Fuller Debate, Transitional Societies and the Rule of Law. In The Hart‐Fuller Debate in the 21st Century, ed. Cane, P.. Oxford: Hart.Google Scholar
Krygier, Martin.. 2016. The Rule of Law Between England and Sudan: Hay, Thompson, and Massoud. Law & Social Inquiry.Google Scholar
Lev, Daniel. 1993. Social Movements, Constitutionalism, and Human Rights: Comments from the Malaysian and Indonesian Experiences. In Constitutionalism and Democracy: Transitions in the Contemporary World, ed. Greenberg, D., Katz, S. N., Oliviero, M. B., and Wheatley, S. C.. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Levinson, Sanford, and Balkin, Jack M.. 2011. Morton Horwitz Wrestles with the Rule of Law. In Transformations in American Legal History II: Law, Ideology, and Morals—Essays in Honor of Morton J. Horwitz. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Massoud, Mark Fathi. 2011. Do Victims of War Need International Law? Human Rights Education Programs in Authoritarian Sudan. Law & Society Review 45:1–32.Google Scholar
Massoud, Mark Fathi.. 2012. Lawyers and the Disintegration of the Legal Complex in Sudan. In Fates of Political Liberalism in the British Post‐Colony: The Politics of the Legal Complex, ed. Halliday, T. C., Karpik, L., and Feeley, M. M.. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Massoud, Mark Fathi.. 2013. Law's Fragile State: Colonial, Authoritarian, and Humanitarian Legacies in Sudan. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Massoud, Mark Fathi.. 2014. International Arbitration and Judicial Politics in Authoritarian States. Law & Social Inquiry 39 (1): 1–30.Google Scholar
Massoud, Mark Fathi.. 2015. Work Rules: How International NGOs Build Law in War‐Torn Societies. Law & Society Review 49 (2): 333–64.Google Scholar
Massoud, Mark Fathi.. 2016. The Politics of Islamic Law and Human Rights: Sudan's Rival Legal Systems. In The New Legal Realism: Studying Law Glomedanibally, ed. Klug, H. and Merry, S. E.. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Massoud, Mark Fathi, and Moore, Kathleen M.. 2015. Rethinking Shari'a: Voices of Islam in California. Boom: A Journal of California 5 (4): 94–99.Google Scholar
Mattei, Ugo, and Nader, Laura. 2008. Plunder: When the Rule of Law Is Illegal. Oxford: Wiley‐Blackwell.Google Scholar
Medani, Khalid Mustafa. 2011. Strife and Secession in Sudan. Journal of Democracy 22 (3): 135–49.Google Scholar
Meierhenrich, Jens. 2008. The Legacies of Law: Long‐Run Consequences of Legal Development in South Africa, 1652–2000. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Merry, Sally Engle. 2006. Human Rights and Gender Violence: Translating International Law into Local Justice. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Merry, Sally Engle.. 2016. The Rule of Law and Authoritarian Rule: Legal Politics in Sudan. Law & Social Inquiry.Google Scholar
Mertz, Elizabeth, Macaulay, Stewart, and Mitchell, Thomas W.. 2016. The New Legal Realism (Volume I): Translating Law‐and‐Society for Today's Legal Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Moore, Sally Falk. 1978. Law as Process: An Anthropological Approach. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.Google Scholar
Moustafa, Tamir. 2007. The Struggle for Constitutional Power: Law, Politics, and Economic Development in Egypt. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
McCann, Michael. 1994. Rights at Work: Pay Equity Reform and the Politics of Legal Mobilization. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
McCann, Michael.. 2014. The Unbearable Lightness of Rights: On Sociolegal Inquiry in the Global Era. Law & Society Review 48 (2): 245–73.Google Scholar
Munger, Frank. 2010. The Cause Lawyer's Cause. Law in Context 28 (2): 95–106.Google Scholar
Munger, Frank.. 2015. Thailand's Cause Lawyers and Twenty‐First‐Century Military Coups: Nation, Identity, and Conflicting Visions of the Rule of Law. Asian Journal of Law and Society 2 (2): 301–22.Google Scholar
Mutua, Makau. 2008. Human Rights: A Political and Cultural Critique. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
Nader, Laura. 2002. The Life of the Law: Anthropological Projects. Berkeley/Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Nietzsche, Friedrich. 2007. On the Genealogy of Morality, ed. Ansell‐Pearson, K., trans. C. Diethe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Nonet, Philippe, and Selznick, Philip. [1978] 2001. Law and Society in Transition: Toward Responsive Law. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction.Google Scholar
Nouwen, Henri. 1979. The Wounded Healer: Ministry in Contemporary Society. New York: Doubleday.Google Scholar
Obasogie, Osagie. 2014. Blinded by Sight: Seeing Race Through the Eyes of the Blind. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Plato. 1960. The Republic and Other Works, trans. B. Jowett. New York: Anchor Books.Google Scholar
Plato. 2000. Laws, trans. B. Jowett. Amherst, NY: Prometheus.Google Scholar
Rana, Aziz. 2010. The Two Faces of American Freedom. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Rosenberg, Gerald. 2008. The Hollow Hope: Can Courts Bring About Social Change? 2d ed. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Savelsberg, Joachim J. 2015. Representing Mass Violence: Conflicting Responses to Human Rights Violations in Darfur. Berkeley/Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Schaffer, Frederic Charles. 2006. Ordinary Language Interviewing. In Interpretation and Method: Empirical Research Methods and the Interpretive Turn, ed. Yanow, D. and Schwartz‐Shea, P., 150–60. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Scheppele, Kim Lane. 2004. Constitutional Ethnography: An Introduction. Law & Society Review 38 (3): 389–406.Google Scholar
Selznick, Philip. 1999. Preface. In Rediscovering Fuller: Essays on Implicit Law and Institutional Design, ed. Witteveen, W. J. and van der Burg, W.. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.Google Scholar
Selznick, Philip.. 2008. A Humanist Science: Values and Ideals in Social Inquiry. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Sharafi, Mitra. 2014. Law and Identity in Colonial South Asia: Parsi Legal Culture, 1772–1947. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Silverstein, Gordon. 2009. Law's Allure: How Law Shapes, Constrains, Saves, and Kills Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Stern, Rachel. 2013. Environmental Litigation in China: A Study in Political Ambivalence. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Tamanaha, Brian. 2006. Law as a Means to an End: Threat to the Rule of Law. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Thompson, E. P. 1975. Whigs and Hunters: The Origin of the Black Act. New York: Pantheon Books.Google Scholar
Williams, Patricia. 1991. The Alchemy of Race and Rights: Diary of a Law Professor. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Winston, Kenneth. 1999. Three Models for the Study of Law. In Rediscovering Fuller: Essays on Implicit Law and Institutional Design, ed. Witteveen, W. J. and van der Burg, W.. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.Google Scholar