University of Pittsburgh School of Law Faculty Blog

Professor Haider Ala Hamoudi spoke last week in San Francisco at the American Society for Comparative Law annual meeteing. An abstract of his remarks:

One common theme can be generally gleaned from any projections of the Muslim East in the West, in any Western country, among nearly every community, including, and perhaps especially, our own academic community. This is the perception of the near ubiquitous role of Islam and, more germane to my remarks, Islamic law, of a historic, medieval kind, in governing the legal order of Muslim states. This is not only distorting, it renders the legal systems of the various Muslim states almost unrecognizable to the countless legal professionals—judges, lawyers and academics—who work in them.
The basic problem seems to be the assumption in the West that the law in the Muslim East can only be legitimized and justified through reference to the shari’a, the vast body or rules and norms developed from Islam’s sacred texts. As a result, constitutional provisions relating to the harmony of all law with shari’a, which are in many cases of dubious legal importance as a practical matter, become magnified in the Western academic literature, to the point where one unfamiliar with the region might well be forgiven for thinking entire constitutions were composed of a single article pertaining to shari’a. Other examinations of law in the Muslim world can often take the same tone, and suggest that legitimacy can only be found if a case for harmony with God’s Law might be made.
The fact is that whether a Muslim state remains in the hands of more secular forces or it has elected Islamists, as in Iraq, or Islamists have taken over in one form or another, as was the case certainly in the Sudan and to a lesser extent Pakistan decades ago, fundamental changes are rarely made to the underlying secular foundations of the state. The secular legal codes, the technical, professional, secular legal training of lawyers and judges, and rulemaking authorities, remain unchanged. Inasmuch as shari’a plays a role in the Muslim state, it is because it is legitimized when enacted through state processes. It is then interpreted by secular lawyers with secular legal training to give it force. The West, then, has the Muslim Rest precisely backwards. Shari’a does not justify secular law, but secular law can recognize and employ shari’a (outside of the law of personal status, in a largely marginal fashion) as part of the law. It is the state that grants legitimacy and authority to the shari’a as law, and not the reverse.

In my brief remarks, I hope first to expose the Western bias, and then to provide at least rudimentary ideas on how law, both Islamic and secular, in the Muslim world might better be studied and understood, particularly by comparatists.

Link

Professor Anthony Infanti presented his paper “Taxing Civil Rights Gains” at the University of Cincinnati College of Law last Friday as part of Pitt’s Scholar Exchange Program with UC.  Here is the abstract, and a prior post on the paper.

David Harris examined statistics from Maricopa County (Phoenix), Arizona for the Arizona Republic’s investigation of racial and ethnic targeting by the county’s popular  Sheriff, Joe Arpaio.  Deputies appear to have used crime sweeps and traffic stops as pretexts in order to examine the immigration status of people who look Mexican.  Professor Harris says that while the data do not constitute proof positive, they supply ample reason for concern that deputies use racial and ethnic appearance to look for illegal immigrants, and further official investigation is warranted.

Link: http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/news/articles/2008/10/05/20081005arpaio-profiling1005.html

On October 3, 2008, Rhonda Wasserman participated in a meeting of the Member’s Consultative Group on the Principles of the Law of Aggregate Litigation, a project of the American Law Institute. The meeting was held at Harvard Law School.

On Friday, September 12, Professor Peter Oh was a participant in the Conference on Empirical Legal Studies held at Cornell Law School.  He presented his paper, “Piercing v. Lifting,” as well as served as a discussant for a paper within a session on Securities Regulation. 

Link

A new complaint of judicial misconduct has been filed against Chief Judge Alex Kozinski of the Ninth Circuit, and Professor Arthur Hellman was quoted in a Bloomberg News story about the accusations. Among other charges, the complaint asserts that Judge Kozinski broke into a computer security system in 2001 and disabled porn-detecting software. Professor Hellman, noting that this accusation has not previously been the subject of a misconduct proceeding, said: “If Judge Kozinski did the things that [former Administrative Office Director Ralph] Mecham accuses him of doing, that certainly sounds like misconduct. If not, then it is important to clear his name.”

Link:
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601127&sid=aJ7bdbVBMUGE&refer=law

At the Annual Conference of the National Academy of Elder Law Attorneys Council of Advanced Practitioners (CAP) held in Denver on September 19-20, Professor Lawrence A. Frolik presented a paper on “Long-Term Care Insurance: Deal or No Deal” in which he discussed how a consumer could make an informed decision on whether to purchase insurance to pay for long-term care provided at home or in an institution.

On Friday, Sept. 26, Professor David Harris testified at the Congressional Black Caucus session on Criminal Justice Issues in Washington, D.C.  Representative John Conyers, chairman of the U.S. House Judiciary Committee, led the session.  Professor Harris testified about police accountability and racial profiling.  His testimony asserted that the next administration must renew efforts 1) to seed new approaches to police accountability through Department of Justice grants, 2) to assure vigorous pursuit of “pattern and practice” cases against police departments violating the Constitution, and 3) to give strong support to passage of the the End Racial Profiling Act.

Professor Anthony Infanti served on the “resource panel” (i.e., the panel of legal, social work, theological, and statistical experts) for the deliberative poll on the issue of marriage in America at Carnegie Mellon University on Saturday, Sept. 27.  The deliberative poll was organized by the Southwestern Pennsylvania Program for Deliberative Democracy. Information about the deliberative poll can be found here: http://www.phil.cmu.edu/caae/dp/polls/fall08/index.html

He blogged about the event at Feminist Law Professors.

The Tokyo Medical and Dental University (TMDU) has published in book form a Japanese translation of the article by Professor Janice Mueller, The Tiger Awakens: The Tumultuous Transformation of India’s Patent System and the Rise of Indian Pharmaceutical Information.  The Tiger Awakens article was first published at 68 University of Pittsburgh L. Rev. 491-641 (2007).  Professor Mueller collaborated on the publication of the Japanese translation with TMDU’s Intellectual Property Division and Professor Toshiko Takenaka, University of Washington School of Law, who served as editorial supervisor for the project. The 290-page hard-bound book (which includes both English and Japanese versions of the article) will be distributed to judges and attorneys at an October 3, 2008 conference on Indian intellectual property enforcement at Waseda University, Tokyo, Japan.