Did medieval Muslim, specifically Sunni jurists, have a conception of due process?  While they did not have a term that corresponds to what common law lawyers call “due process,” they elaborated numerous procedural and jurisdictional rules that manifest concern with that constellation of values which is associated with due process and, in the terms of US constitutional law, “ordered liberty.”  I am currently finishing up a translation of an important medieval treatise on the powers of various public officials which touches on many of these issues, Shihab al-Din al-Qarafi’s, al-Ihkam fi Tamyiz al-Fatawa ‘an al-Ahkam wa Tasarrufat al-Qadi wa-l-Imam.  I have pasted below a particularly interesting discussion on the question of when it is permissible for an individual to determine, unilaterally, whether sufficient legal cause exists to exercise some legal right or privilege, and when that legal right or privilege cannot be exercised without a prior judicial determination that exercise of the right in question is legally justified (Question no. 32 from that book).  Any comments or questions would be appreciated.

Earlier this week, the Boston Review published an essay of mine titled “What Killed Egyptian Democracy?”  An Egyptian friend of mine, an academic who completed his Ph.D. in the US and then returned to Egypt to teach, sent me his own reaction to my essay.  I reproduce it below (name omitted):

This month’s issue of the Boston Review’s Forum was dedicated the question of what went wrong in the Egyptian transition.  I had  the honor of writing the principal piece, which elicited thoughtful responses from my colleagues, Ellis Goldberg, Andrew March, Nathan Brown, Akbar Ganji, Anne Norton and Micheline Ishay. Space restraints, of course, did not allow them a full response, nor me a response to their limited responses, but nevertheless, I thought the editors of the Boston Review did an excellent job putting this forum together. I would like to thank them for inviting me to write the piece, inviting these distinguished scholars to respond, and producing an excellent final version for the public. Finally, I’d like to thank Nader Hashimi and Danny Postel for inviting me to the University of Denver to lecture on Egypt’s transition. That lecture ultimately give birth to this forum.

Last week, The Boston Review published a short post by me on the significance of the Egyptian government’s decision to designate the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organization. I was happy to find out that the same piece was picked up The Daily Dish and Informed Comment.

Their January/February forum will be dedicated to the question of Egypt’s failed democratic transition.  They graciously invited me to write the principal essay.   Respondents are Andrew March, Ellis Goldberg, Nathan Brown, Micheline Ishay, Akbar Ganji, and Anne Norton. It is scheduled to appear on the third anniversary of the January 25th Revolution.

I just finished reading a recent article of the Yale Political Science Professor, Ian Shapiro, “On Non-Domination,” in which he contrasts his view of “power-based resourcism” and non-domination as the bedrock of justice to egalitarian and libertarian conceptions of justice. 

Here is a link to a memo providing a detailed, article by article comparison between the law promulgated by the June 30 government and that proposed by the Morsi government.

The “revolutionary” government — headed by the interim President, Adly Mansur, previously president of Egypt’s Supreme Constitutional Court, otherwise known as a bastion for liberal and democratic values — has passed a new law titled “Organization of the Right to Public Meetings, Marches and Peaceful Demonstrations.” Here is a link to the official version as published in the Egyptian Gazette.

I came across this 100-page report today documenting the names of many of the dead from the Rab’a Massacre and the circumstances of their death.  I cannot comment on the details, but I think it is crucial that Egyptians face the grim details of what happened on August 14.  By any objective measure, the Egyptian police and military committed “serious violations of common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions,” i.e., they committed war crimes. 

Some Egyptians seem to think that the Erdogan’s government opposition to the July coup against Morsi is rooted in a fear that the Egpytian anti-MB revolution/coup represented an “existential  threat” to the Turkish government.  This seems far-fetched, at least in light of the substantial achievements of the Erdogan government since it came to power a decade ago.  Moreover, its success is reflected in the equity markets of each nation: Turkey has massively outperformed Egypt as well as a broad index of emerging equity markets (EEM) over the last five years, as this graph shows (TUR is the red line; EGPT is the green line; EEM is the blue line):

Markets, of course, are not always right, but they represent relatively educated guesses about the future; moreover, to a large extent, they also shape future expectations: a track record of market profits itself produces optimism that increases investments, and in turn, reinforces a cycle of positive growth.  On the other hand, consistent losses discourage future investment, and thus risks producing the very same pessimistic outcome that the market is forecasting.

My latest piece in the International Journal of Constitutional Law on the relationship of legal culture to the legitimacy of the project of modern Islamic law and its role in assisting in a successful democratic transition has now been published.