ABSTRACT

Faced by the apparent difference between legal traditions, how should scholars and policy makers assess their compatibility or incompatibility? What criteria should be used to adjudge the commensurability, or even the elements of incongruity, between traditions that have developed in different cultural, social and economic circumstances? This article argues for a shift from the way that much of the scholarship on Islamic legal traditions in Western polities pursues these questions. First, scholars assess Islamic legal traditions by explicitly or implicitly assessing their compliance with a contingent Western rendition of the rule of law. Second, comparisons tend to focus on a Western legal theoretical priority of the ‘rule’ itself, whereby conceptualisations of law are parsed out using an analytical infrastructure particular to the contingent history of the nation state. Such approaches may usefully assess migrant traditions’ political compatibility with a benevolent or hegemonic Western legal regime. Indeed, they may be defended philosophically on the basis of ‘difference blind’ legal arrangements or some kind of minimal secular baseline of governance. However, these approaches are insufficient for addressing the prior question of commensurability. Based on ethnographic data from the Shia Muslim tradition of legal training, I offer a brief account of two ‘repertoires of justification’ standing askance from this anyhow contingent rendition of Western law. This account serves as a counterpoint to rule based approaches, demonstrating why commensurability should be assessed through an attentiveness to the alternative logics of other legal traditions.

摘要

面对法律传统之间的明显差异，学者和政策制定者应如何评估其相容或不相容？应该用什么标准来判断在不同文化、社会和经济环境下发展起来的传统之间的可通约性，甚至不一致的因素？本文主张改变西方政治中伊斯兰法律传统的大部分学术研究探讨这些问题的方式。首先，学者们通过明确或含蓄地评估伊斯兰法律传统是否符合西方法治的偶然表现来评估伊斯兰法律传统。其次，比较往往集中于“规则”本身的西方法律理论优先性，利用特定于民族国家偶然历史的分析基础设施来解析法律的概念。这些方法可以有效地评估移民传统与仁慈或霸权西方法律制度的政治兼容性。事实上，它们可能会在“差异盲”法律安排或某种最低限度的世俗治理基线的基础上得到哲学上的辩护。然而，这些方法不足以解决先前的可通约性问题。基于来自什叶派穆斯林法律培训传统的人种学数据，我简要介绍了两种与这种无论如何偶然的西方法律演绎相悖的“正当理由的全部内容”。这个帐户作为基于规则的方法的对立面，