Iran: A Clash of Two Cultures?

Since the 1979 Revolution, the clerical regime in Iran has been limiting the legal profession’s autonomy by preventing members of the Iranian Bar Association (IBA) from freely electing their Board of Directors and by establishing a new body of lawyers—legal advisors of the judiciary—to contest the IBA’s professional monopoly. Clerics have even attempted to bring the legal profession under the control of the Ministry of Justice and merge it with the legal advisors. The IBA’s struggle to remain a civil society organisation independent of the judiciary offers a vantage point from which to explore the role of the legal profession in Iranian society and the legal system of the Islamic Republic. Why does the Iranian judiciary oppose an independent legal profession, and why does the profession refuse to capitulate? What are the implications of this ongoing conflict for the legal order of the Islamic Republic, whose political elite consists mainly of Islamic jurists? What are the socio-cultural consequences of undermining the integrity and autonomy of the legal profession? These questions will guide our inquiry.After discussing the IBA’s development before and after the 1979 Revolution, we describe how practising attorneys view the IBA, advocacy, legal practice, legal services and their troubled relationship with the judiciary. They recount the obstacles they encounter within a politicised judicial order and explain how they preserve professional integrity within a legal system that lacks the public’s confidence. We conclude by arguing that the Islamic Republic’s attempt to subordinate the legal profession to administrative and ideological control by the judiciary reflects the clash of two legal cultures. Iranian judges reconstruct and apply Islamic jurisprudence (fiqh) as part of their efforts to deliver substantive justice within a codified legal system, while IBA attorneys understand and seek to practise law consistent with the ideals of due process, certainty and uniformity in legal decision-making

Rättslig diskurs i etnokulturella frågor

Hur mycket kostar det i Sverige att “sätta en jude på plats“? Enligt dagens rättspraxis ett tusen kronor i skadestånd, för psykiskt lidande, samt 50 till 80 dagsböter. Detta pris är, enligt Skövde tingsrätt, ett kraftigt straff. Den 28 augusti 1991 åtalades två unga män, E och F, vid Skövde tingsrätt för “ofredande“ av S, en värnpliktskamrat av judisk härkomst. De två unga männen hade “smädat“ S genom att gå fram till honom där han låg och skrika “gas, gas, gas“. I domskälet står det att de gjorde det med anspelning på att många judar gasades ihjäl i Hitler-Tyskland. Den judiske värnpliktige var enligt de åtalade “störig“ och skrytsam, för han talade ofta om att Israel var underbart och Sverige “kass“

Vilhelm Lundstedt’s ‘Legal Machinery’ and the Demise of Juristic Practice

This article aims to contribute to the academic debate on the general crisis faced by law schools and the legal professions by discussing why juristic practice is a matter of experience rather than knowledge. Through a critical contextualisation of Vilhelm Lundstedt’s thought under processes of globalisation and transnationalism, it is argued that the demise of the jurist’s function is related to law’s scientification as brought about by the metaphysical construction of reality. The suggested roadmap will in turn reveal that the current voiding of juristic practice and its teaching is part of the crisis regarding what makes us human

Svart eller vit i lagens ögon

Likhet inför lagen, som utgör de etniska minoriteternas mest grundläggande skydd mot maktövergrepp och etnisk diskriminering, ifrågasattes i Rodney Kings rättegång i Simi Valley 1992. Detta utlöste en rad kravaller som lämnade spår efter sig av blod och förstörelse. Kravallernas vådsamma karaktär var en reaktion på vad de svarta betraktade som det vita etablissemangets rättsövergrepp mot dem

Law, Love and Responsibility : A Note on Solidarity in EU Law

This paper argues that although solidarity was developed as a principle in EU law to enhance the unity and cooperation between the Member States, its viability at the transnational level remains ultimately a function of its efficacy at the micro level of EU citizens. The question at the core of this inquiry concerns, therefore, how micro and macro dimensions of solidarity are related to each other sociologically and what their relationship means for EU law and the EU’s integration policy. The paper begins by taking a closer look at how the notion of solidarity has been conceptualised within sociology and the sociology of law, before examining the role of solidarity in EU law and policy. It concludes by arguing that the crisis of solidarity must be reexamined in the context of the contradictory policies pursued by the EU which, on the one hand, promote social conflicts while, on the other hand, seek to stabilise social conditions by appealing to a European sense of solidarity. This turns the EU into a source of anxiety that generates a negative form of solidarity, one which is tribal in nature and lends itself easily to the populist tide of nationalism and fear that is currently sweeping across Europe

On Socio-Legal Design

This chapter provides an introduction to research design in sociology of law by describing the stages which jointly shape the process of socio-legal inquiry. It asks if there is a specific way of planning research in sociology of law which distinguishes itself from research design in other social science disciplines. Research design is often used somewhat narrowly to examine the correspondence between our choice of research methods, such as surveys, interviews, discourse analysis or observation, on the one hand, and the type of empirical data which we need for our study, on the other. It ensures that the evidence (the empirical data) we collect allows us to answer the question at the core of our inquiry in a satisfactory fashion. However, this chapter will use a broader understanding of research design to include not only the correspondence between the methods we use and the data we need to answer our research questions, but also the entire structure of our research including our research objectives, literature review, theoretical framework, analysis of the findings and the ethical dimensions of our research. It also includes certain choices we make in the course of our research, such as viewing the relationship between law and society top-down or bottom-up, as part of our overall research design. The chapter begins with briefly discussing law (or the law) as a contested concept with both a narrow and a broad definition, before exploring how top-down and bottom-up approaches influence our overall design. Then, it moves on to discuss socio-legal research design and concludes with a critical assessment of the research potential of the so-called “gap problem” in sociology of law and a discussion on the limitations of traditional methods of research in digital environments which engender new forms of social interaction and (power) relations

Can Legal Sociology Account for the Normativity of Law?

This paper challenges the assumption that legal sociology should apply itself to the external or factual properties of the law and leave the internal and normative aspects of legal phenomena to doctrinal scholars and moral philosophers. It argues that legal sociology explores the normative contexts of the law and other social systems, but being restricted by its “scientific” mode of expression it describes and analyses them in sociological rather than moral terms. Legal sociology is, and should be seen as, a different language game than moral and legal philosophy, and its treatment of normativity should be understood on its own terms. The assertion that legal sociology should limit its scope of analysis to the study of the empirical aspects of law and leave the study of law’s normative dimensions to other branches of legal studies is itself a normative supposition and part of the competing discourses which constitute the field of legal research. These discourses aim at demarcating the disciplinary boundaries between various epistemic approaches to the study of law and creating disciplinary identities rather than exploring the methodological scope of socio-legal research. Part One starts by briefly considering the relationship between norms and normativity, arguing that normativity is generated by system as well as lifeworld and is not necessarily reducible to the effects or functions of individual norms. Part Two develops this point by making a case for justice as law’s source of normativity par excellence. It maintains that although the relationship between law and justice is often discussed in terms of norms, the normativity that justice exercises on law is dependent on the broader context of the legal system, which is defined differently by different theories. Part Three draws attention to the methodological constraints of socio-legal research, according to which social scientific studies of law should apply themselves to the external empirical or factual properties of the relationship between law and society and leave the internal and normative matters to doctrinal scholars and moral philosophers, respectively. The paper concludes by arguing that the sphere of socio-legal research is not, and cannot be, limited to an examination of the factual characteristics of law. Moreover, the assertion that legal sociology should apply itself to the study of the empirical aspects of law and leave the normative dimensions to other legal scholars is a normative stance and part of on-going attempts at demarcating the disciplinary boundaries of various branches of legal studies