Implementing the Law of khulʿ in Egypt

This article aims to contribute to the growing scholarly literature on the implementation of shariʿa-based family law codes by describing and analyzing the gender implications of religiously inspired judicial activism in relation to judicial divorce through khulʿ. The article highlights two functions played by family court judges and other legal professionals. First, I argue that Egyptian family court judges and other court personnel, such as court experts and court-appointed arbiters from al-Azhar, enjoy considerable discretion in interpreting and implementing the personal status codes. Second, the article argues that legal professionals sometimes use the court and other legal spaces as a platform to articulate alternative visions of family and marriage, as well as to voice anxieties over a perceived increase in female-initiated divorce. The article situates these contradictory practices against the background of the contestation of early twenty-first-century reforms, which challenged male authority in the family, in particular the 2000 law of judicial khulʿ.

Family Violence and Judicial Empathy: Managing Personal Cross Examination in Australian Family Law Proceedings

Enquiries and research reveal that many victims of family violence who are personally cross-examined by the alleged perpetrator of that violence in family law proceedings find the process traumatising and intimidating. Not only can such processes generate unsafe and unfair outcomes but also they are unlikely to produce the high quality evidence required by the court. In deference to the emotional wellbeing and vulnerability of these victims, a number of measures for receiving such evidence are available to Australian Family Court judges. However, currently these are all discretionary powers and anecdotal evidence suggests that the use of these tools is unpredictable and dependent on the individual judge. In the absence of empirical evidence, this paper aims to open up potential emotional dimensions of judicial decision-making in this context with a view to exploring these theoretical ideas in later empirical work. Investigaciones revelan que muchas víctimas de violencia doméstica que, en el curso de procedimientos en tribunales de derecho de familia, son sometidas a contrainterrogatorios por parte del supuesto autor de esa violencia consideran ese proceso traumatizante e intimidatorio. Esos procesos no sólo pueden arrojar resultados inseguros e injustos, sino que también tienen pocas probabilidades de producir el material probatorio de calidad que requiere un tribunal. Por deferencia al bienestar emocional y a la vulnerabilidad de esas víctimas, los jueces de familia de Australia tienen a su disposición varias medidas para obtener esas pruebas; sin embargo, actualmente, son sólo poderes discrecionales, y pruebas circunstanciales sugieren que su uso es impredecible y dependiente de cada juez. En ausencia de pruebas empíricas, este artículo intenta abrir una dimensión emocional potencial de la toma de decisiones judiciales en este contexto, con miras a explorar esas ideas teóricas en trabajos empíricos posteriores.