scholarly journals Review of Collective Liability in Islam: The ʿĀqila and Blood-Money Payments by Nurit Tsafrir

2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 145-148
Author(s):  
Omar Anchassi
Keyword(s):  
State Formation ◽  
Legal History ◽  
Financial Burden ◽  
Individual Responsibility ◽  
Stressed Group ◽  
Group Loyalty ◽  
History Of ◽  
Blood Money ◽  
The One ◽  
Subsequent Modification

A man came before al-Hajjaj (d. 95/714) complaining that his house had been demolished and his stipend (ʿaṭāʾ) suspended because of the misdemeanours of a fellow tribesman. ‘That’s too bad’, the governor replied, ‘have you not heard the poet say: ‘…it might be that someone is seized for the sin of his tribesman/while the one who commits the deed escapes’?’ ‘God rectify the governor’, the man replied, ‘I have heard God say otherwise.’ ‘How so?’ al-Hajjajasked. The man recited: ‘“O Minister! He has an aged father, so take one of us in his place: we see you as one of the virtuous.” He [Joseph] said, “We seek refuge in God that we should seize someone other than him in whose possession our [stolen] goods were found; otherwise, we would be of the wrongdoers”’ (Q. 12:78–79). Al-Hajjajordered that the man’s house be rebuilt, his stipend restored, and that a crier announce ‘God has spoken the truth, and the poet has lied!’ As this anecdote stresses, and al-Hajjaj pointedly recognises, the principle of individual responsibility is crucial to Islam’s moral weltanschauung. It marks a significant departure from jāhilī ethics, which were tribal in character and stressed group loyalty to the detriment of all else: ‘Succour your brother, oppressor or oppressed’. Nurit Tsafrir’s brilliantly researched monograph on the institution of the ʿāqila, its adoption and subsequent modification under the Umayyads and the Hanafī School, sheds much needed light on this development, and on how the careful reading of legal and other sources can allow for the reconstruction of aspects of social and legal history. The ʿāqila is the group responsible for the payment of blood-money in cases of non-intentional homicide or injury. Jurists conceded that while its origins are indeed jāhilī, the Prophet confirmed (aqarra) this institution, rendering it properly Islamic. That those not responsible for offences should still bear the financial burden of compensation clearly reflects the tribal context of the Prophet’s mission, and seemingly contradicts, Tsafrir observes, the principle of individual responsibility, a tension jurists alternately recognised and explained away (2–3). The Hijaz had no history of state formation prior to Islam, and as generations of Islamicists have remarked, the resulting law of homicide resembles a civil more than it does a criminal wrong (8). According to the jurists, it in fact belongs to a composite category, since the perpetrator is required to atone for their sin irrespective of any compensation (15).

Carta sine litteris – kora középkori okirathasználat és historiográfia

2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 43-58
Author(s):  
Tamás Nótári
Keyword(s):  
Legal History ◽  
Historical Reality ◽  
History Of ◽  
The One

In the work De Europa by Enea Silvio Piccolomini, book no 20, regarding the history of Carinthia, stands recorded the story of prince Ingo, who, according to the legend, contributed significantly by way of his wit to the spreading of Christianity. This study presents the circumstances in which the Conversio Bagoariorum et Carantanorum, which contains an earlier record of the legend, came into being, and it examines the possible existence in historical reality of prince Ingo and his princely title. In the following, the author analyses the possible meaning and the significance to legal history of the term carta sine litteris (a charter without letters), which appears in other sources of the legend but not in the one recounted by Enea Silvio Piccolomini. Finally, the author presents the literary precursors to the legend of prince Ingo and his role in the Conversio as well as the path the legend took until being recorded by Enea Silvio.

Queer Legal History: A Field Grows Up and Comes Out

2011 ◽  
Vol 36 (02) ◽  
pp. 537-559 ◽  
Author(s):  
Felicia Kornbluh
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Legal History ◽  
The United States ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
History Of ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Military Law ◽  
The One ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The New Deal

This essay examines recent scholarship on the legal history of sexuality in the United States. It focuses on Margot Canaday's The Straight State: Sexuality and Citizenship in Modern America (2009) and Marc Stein's Sexual Injustice: Supreme Court Decisions from Griswold to Roe (2010). It also reviews recent work on the history of marriage, including Sarah Barringer Gordon's The Spirit of the Law: Religious Voices and the Constitution in Modern America (2010) and George Chauncey's Why Marriage? The History Shaping Today's Debate Over Gay Equality (2004), and the history of military law Defending America: Military Culture and the Cold‐War Court Martial (2005), by Elizabeth Lutes Hillman. The essay argues that this scholarship is significant because it offers a different view of sex and power than the one derived from the early writing of Michel Foucault. “Queer legal history” treats the liberalism of the 1960s‐1970s as sexually discriminatory as well as liberatory. It underlines the exclusions that were part of public policy under the federal G.I. Bill and the New Deal welfare state.

Constructing “Private” Historical Justice in State-Building

2020 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 305-341
Author(s):  
Manal Totry-Jubran
Keyword(s):  
Legal History ◽  
State Building ◽  
Public Institutions ◽  
Jewish State ◽  
Arab Population ◽  
Historical Justice ◽  
Jewish Settlement ◽  
History Of ◽  
Jewish Immigrants ◽  
The One

AbstractWealthy philanthropic individuals operating within private law have been largely absent from the historical justice narrative of states in transition and, consequently, from normative discussion regarding the justification of their actions under the auspices of the market. This Article seeks to fill this void by examining the “private” historical justice of Jewish state-building prior to the establishment of Israel. Specifically, it focuses on the legal history of Baron Edmond de Rothschild’s settlement project during the Ottoman and Mandate periods and investigates the project’s normative implications. The Baron was a fundamental actor in the design of the Palestinian/Israeli space, as he supported existing Jewish settlements and established new ones. He also built several public institutions that continue to exist to date. I argue that the Baron’s settlement project needs to be addressed from a multidimensional aspect with regard to different groups that were affected by it. On the one hand, his settlement project was just towards the Jewish settlement because it provided a shelter for Jewish immigrants who fled Europe, and it realized the Jews’ right of self-determination. On the other hand, his project resulted in the coercive displacement of an underprivileged local Arab population called the fellaheen and unjustly infringed on their territorial rights.

scholarly journals THE COMPARATIVE LEGAL HISTORY OF LIMITATION AND PRESCRIPTION

Obiter ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 39 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Eltjo Schrage
Keyword(s):  
Legal History ◽  
Common Law ◽  
Civil Law ◽  
The Other ◽  
Legal Systems ◽  
Oliver Wendell Holmes ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Law ◽  
The One

Within both the civil law and the common law (as well as in mixed legal systems), there are means of acquiring and losing rights, or of freeing ourselves from obligations with the passage of time. The reason for this is at least twofold: on the one hand, for a claimant, a dispossessed owner or a creditor, limitation and prescription provide stimuli for bringing the action; on the other, this sanction upon the negligence of the claimant implies in many cases a windfall for the defendant. If a creditor is negligent in protecting his assets, the law at a certain stage no longer protects him or her. As Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. said aptly some 100 years ago: “Sometimes it is said that, if a man neglects to enforce his rights, he cannot complain if, after a while, the law follows his example”.

scholarly journals Aleksandar Soloveov as an investigator of Baltazar Bogisic's heritage and of legal and historical documents from the 15th till the 19th century

2007 ◽  
pp. 71-89
Author(s):  
Aleksandar Miljkovic
Keyword(s):  
19Th Century ◽  
Critical Analysis ◽  
Legal History ◽  
Royal Academy ◽  
Research Work ◽  
Historical Material ◽  
History Of ◽  
The One ◽  
The 19Th Century ◽  
Unknown Manuscript

This paper discusses Aleksandar Solovyev?s research which he primarily carried out in Bogisic?s archive in Cavtat, as well as the research including other sources relevant for the legal history of our nation in the Dubrovnik region, in other coastal areas and in the countries in their immediate hinterland; all the documents belong to the period from the 15th till the 19th century. Although he discovered most of these documents in Bogisic?s archive, Solovyev got documents from other sources, too. Solovyev published the greatest part of these materials in the editions of The Serbian Royal Academy, but he also published some treatises and articles in the following magazines: Arhiv za pravne i drustvene nauke, Godisnjica Nikole Cupica and some others. Furthermore, the author particularly underlines the fact that Solovyev - in his introductory texts accompanying his publications - also did the scientific and critical analysis of the collected historical material. Studying Bogisic?s archive in Cavtat, Solovyev also got interested in the very personality of Baltazar Bogisic. In his articles in Arhiv za pravne i drustvene nauke, Solovyev particularly presented his discoveries about Bogisic?s archive, he also found an unknown manuscript of Bogisic?s, the one about a law project written for the rebels from Herzegovina when they rose against the Turks for the liberation of the Serbian nation in 1875. In his collaboration with the Herzegovian rebells, Bogisic expressed his Serbian patriotic feelings, too. As for his nationality, Bogisic felt to be a Serb (?a Serb catholic?, as he used to say), but also a member of the South Slavic nation. Thus Solovyev in one of his articles (in French) described Bogisic?s activity in the elaboration of the law projects for the newly liberated Bulgaria, which remained less known in our country. Discussing Bogisic?s patriotic activity, too, the author also presents other facts about his nationality. Although the results of Solovyev?s research work discussed in this paper were available to our scientific public, our scholars have not written about them so far.

scholarly journals Highlight of the state formation problem in literature (based on the autobiographical work by Roman Ivanychuk «Bless the lord…»)

2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (21) ◽  
pp. 49-56
Author(s):  
Tamara Nikolchenko ◽  
◽  
Maria Nikolchenko ◽  
Keyword(s):  
State Formation ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Special Role ◽  
Historical Novels ◽  
Literary Research ◽  
Literary Process ◽  
History Of ◽  
Autobiographical Work ◽  
The One

The article tackles a vital problem of nowadays. The topicality of the title selected is determined by insufficient literary research of the motive of Ukrainian state formation highlighted in the writers’ works. A special role among the writers who raised the issues of state formation is played by R. Ivanychuk. This is a prominent writer of nowadays, the author of many collections of stories and short stories as well as the author of more than twenty historical novels. All the novels by Ivanychuk are united into one cycle and are based on the same material, the common historical events and characters as well as symbols and cross-cutting themes and ideas. The most significant of those ideas is the one of love for the homeland and for the nation as the sense of human existence. His book «Bless the Lord…» was published in 1993. In the foreword MP of Ukraine R. Ivanychuk as a writer and politician traces the history of his generation and the formation of its national consciousness after proclaiming the independence of Ukraine. The author shows how through parliamentary battles and party wars the brand new literary process emerged with a focus on literary and political leaders he knew well enough. This peculiar chronicle is based on a great number of memories of the difficult events associated with the creation of independent Ukraine after the collapse of the empire – the USSR. The author presents his memories as an integral part of the Ukrainian literature. From a writer’s point of view, a master of words cannot get rid of these age-old questions if he is truly hurt by the fate of the nation. The work is composed of two parts: «Literature and state» and «State and literature». This is a peculiar view of the problem – an artist and the power, the problem of the past and the future of our nation. In the writer’s view, the master of the word cannot evade from these everlasting questions if he or she really cares for the nation’s fate. Focusing on the high purpose of the writer, R. Ivanychuk in the second part of his memoirs mentions the difficult relationship between the writers and the authorities. This work evidences the main assignment of writing – building a new democratic Ukraine. Both in the analyzed work and in his numerous speeches, the writer emphasized that literature is a temple. And in this temple there should be no place for artisans from literature, who carry dirt into the spiritual life, disdain for man, for his future. The second part of the book abounds in the writer’s speculations about the role of literature in society and in requirements as per its high artistry level. The writer thinks that literature is a temple that cannot give any room for bunglers from literature who bring garbage to their works as well as disrespect for the human being and for his / her future.

Misreading Egypt

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jesse Schotter
Keyword(s):  
New Media ◽  
Narrative Form ◽  
Experimental Film ◽  
Tower Of Babel ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Sergei Eisenstein ◽  
History Of ◽  
The One ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Modern Technologies

The first chapter of Hieroglyphic Modernisms exposes the complex history of Western misconceptions of Egyptian writing from antiquity to the present. Hieroglyphs bridge the gap between modern technologies and the ancient past, looking forward to the rise of new media and backward to the dispersal of languages in the mythical moment of the Tower of Babel. The contradictory ways in which hieroglyphs were interpreted in the West come to shape the differing ways that modernist writers and filmmakers understood the relationship between writing, film, and other new media. On the one hand, poets like Ezra Pound and film theorists like Vachel Lindsay and Sergei Eisenstein use the visual languages of China and of Egypt as a more primal or direct alternative to written words. But Freud, Proust, and the later Eisenstein conversely emphasize the phonetic qualities of Egyptian writing, its similarity to alphabetical scripts. The chapter concludes by arguing that even avant-garde invocations of hieroglyphics depend on narrative form through an examination of Hollis Frampton’s experimental film Zorns Lemma.

Theodor W. Adorno

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Colby Dickinson
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
History Of Thought ◽  
History Of ◽  
The One

In his somewhat controversial book Remnants of Auschwitz, Agamben makes brief reference to Theodor Adorno’s apparently contradictory remarks on perceptions of death post-Auschwitz, positions that Adorno had taken concerning Nazi genocidal actions that had seemed also to reflect something horribly errant in the history of thought itself. There was within such murderous acts, he had claimed, a particular degradation of death itself, a perpetration of our humanity bound in some way to affect our perception of reason itself. The contradictions regarding Auschwitz that Agamben senses to be latent within Adorno’s remarks involve the intuition ‘on the one hand, of having realized the unconditional triumph of death against life; on the other, of having degraded and debased death. Neither of these charges – perhaps like every charge, which is always a genuinely legal gesture – succeed in exhausting Auschwitz’s offense, in defining its case in point’ (RA 81). And this is the stance that Agamben wishes to hammer home quite emphatically vis-à-vis Adorno’s limitations, ones that, I would only add, seem to linger within Agamben’s own formulations in ways that he has still not come to reckon with entirely: ‘This oscillation’, he affirms, ‘betrays reason’s incapacity to identify the specific crime of Auschwitz with certainty’ (RA 81).

Thomas Glyn Watkin, The Legal History of Wales

2007 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 460-461
Author(s):  
George L Gretton
Keyword(s):  
Legal History ◽  
History Of

Sea Urchins and Circuses: The Modernist Natural Histories of Jean Painlevé and Alexander Calder

2018 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 187-211
Author(s):  
Patricia E. Chu
Keyword(s):  
New Media ◽  
Sea Urchins ◽  
Life Sciences ◽  
Three Dimensional ◽  
Machine Age ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
History Of ◽  
And Performance ◽  
The One ◽  
Natural Historian

The Paris avant-garde milieu from which both Cirque Calder/Calder's Circus and Painlevé’s early films emerged was a cultural intersection of art and the twentieth-century life sciences. In turning to the style of current scientific journals, the Paris surrealists can be understood as engaging the (life) sciences not simply as a provider of normative categories of materiality to be dismissed, but as a companion in apprehending the “reality” of a world beneath the surface just as real as the one visible to the naked eye. I will focus in this essay on two modernist practices in new media in the context of the history of the life sciences: Jean Painlevé’s (1902–1989) science films and Alexander Calder's (1898–1976) work in three-dimensional moving art and performance—the Circus. In analyzing Painlevé’s work, I discuss it as exemplary of a moment when life sciences and avant-garde technical methods and philosophies created each other rather than being classified as separate categories of epistemological work. In moving from Painlevé’s films to Alexander Calder's Circus, Painlevé’s cinematography remains at the forefront; I use his film of one of Calder's performances of the Circus, a collaboration the men had taken two decades to complete. Painlevé’s depiction allows us to see the elements of Calder's work that mark it as akin to Painlevé’s own interest in a modern experimental organicism as central to the so-called machine-age. Calder's work can be understood as similarly developing an avant-garde practice along the line between the bestiary of the natural historian and the bestiary of the modern life scientist.

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