Courts: A Comparative and Political Analysis

Courts: A Comparative and Political Analysis

Language: English

Pages: 256

ISBN: 0226750434

Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub


In this provocative work, Martin Shapiro proposes an original model for the study of courts, one that emphasizes the different modes of decision making and the multiple political roles that characterize the functioning of courts in different political systems.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

and the traditions were produced not by judges but by jurisconsults, independent scholars learned in the law. As a result of early dynastic quarrels among the heirs and successors of the Prophet, Islam, the community of true believers has, almost from its first triumphs, been divided into two major (Sunni, Shi’ite) and numerous minor sects. The vast Muslim empire and sphere of influence once stretched from the Philippines in a broad belt through India, Persia, and the Arab lands and across North

students of courts would look at social control as a much more neutral function than that presented here and some would deny that courts do or should engage in lawmaking. Second, it is in the sphere of conflict resolution that the most favorable case can be made for the conventional, four-element prototype of courts presented at the beginning of this chapter. We have now seen that, even in that context, the prototype is misleading particularly in its third and fourth elements. Next we shall see

must be remembered, however, that the caliph’s regime itself is not a secular one in the Western sense. The Abbasid emphasis on Islam was at the same time an elevation of Islam and an elevation of the caliph, who as defender of the faithful wielded both religious and secular authority. While nominally supervised by a chief kadi, the kadis in reality served at the pleasure of the political authorities. In practice that usually still meant the caliph’s territorial governor. THE SECULAR COURTS At

Maxwell, 1929); Plucknett, pp. 215–30. 58. On English legal education see P. Lucas, “Blackstone and the Reform of the Legal Profession,” English History Review, 77(1962): 456; H. Hanbury, The Vinerian Chair and Legal Education (Oxford: Blackwell, 1958). 59. Holdsworth, 1:197. 60. See G. Elton, Tudor Revolution in Government (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1953). 61. Parliamentary supply usually consisted of a fixed sum of money granted to the king, often for a specific purpose such as

It is written in as direct a style as I can manage. Chapter 1 presents an overview of the conflict resolution, social control, and lawmaking activities of courts and of the relations between trial and appellate courts both as fact and law finders. The remaining chapters describe the common law, civil law, imperial Chinese, and Islamic legal traditions. The general propositions of chapter 1 are as applicable to American courts as to those of other nations and the chapter concludes with a brief

Download sample

Download