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A verdict that was right by accident: did the court know he was guilty?
Fuller’s King Rex, read by someone who spent thirty-one years in the courts
Thirty-one years of watching courts decide what is ‘reasonable’, and no degrees of truth in sight
The five rulings, from obligatory to forbidden: why the middle categories are not just extra boxes
Al-Shaybani’s siyar and the scholastics reached civilian immunity separately
Thirty-one years in the courts: legal causation is not physical causation, and should not be
Recent replies
- What is the difference between jus ad bellum and jus in bello, and why keep them apart?
Fajar, to your second question: yes. In Islamic law the siyar, the law governing conduct with other peoples in war and peace, distinguishes when fighting is permitted from how it must be conducted. Al…
- If consent of the governed is the newcomer, what did legitimacy rest on before it?
To add to Javier's list from my own tradition: classical Islamic theory of the caliphate, in jurists like al-Māwardī, includes the bayʿa, the pledge of allegiance, and the duty of consultation, s…
- Han Feizi’s case for clear law, read in Lahore
Thirty-one years of watching courts taught me that discretion is also where mercy lives. Han Feizi hated mercy; he thought a ruler who pardons teaches his people that the law can be bargained with. Is…
- Reading group: Huizinga’s Homo Ludens, starting with ‘Nature and Significance of Play’
Week 2, play and law. I sat thirty-one years in courtrooms and I expected to be offended. I was not. The argument is that a trial keeps the shape of a contest: two sides, rules of procedure, a bounded…
- The buyer at the gate offers more than the cooperative: does a promise bind when breaking it pays?
The Qur'an opens one of its chapters with the command to fulfil your contracts. The jurists did not read this as “fulfil them when convenient”. They allowed contracts to be rescinded in cases of…