Who Wants Law Schools?
Turki Al-Thunayan • Al-WatanThe need for the Kingdom to have law schools teaching the legal profession has become a pressing necessity. In the past law schools were luxuries, but it is no longer the case. With globalization now removing the barriers between countries and competition so fierce that only those coping with the new realities can expect to survive, the need to have law schools is greater than ever.
It is unfortunate that because we don’t recognize it as a separate discipline, we refuse to teach law in our universities in specialized faculties and continue to treat it as if it were a plague.
This article–from the Arabic daily Al-Watan merits your attention.
The writer, without out spelling it out directly, notes that Saudi society is now faced with a contradiction of its own making: According to all legal precedent, the only law of Saudi arabia is religious law, the Shari’a. But Shari’a law is not capable of dealing with all legal issues anymore. As a result, “commercial law”, “labor law”, and several other constructs have appeared to deal with those issues not well-handled under Shari’a jurisprudence. As far as it goes, those work more-or-less adequately.
But the time has come–particularly with Saudi accession to the WTO on the horizon–for Saudis to be trained in Law (with a capital L). To publicly admit this, though, can be seen as a criticism of the Shari’a, something that is politically impossible.
The fact that Law is among the fields of study permitted under the new program offering scholarships for study in the US is telling. It may help to fill the gap until hard political decisions can be taken. This isn’t the first example of a government being caught between a rock and a hard place because of law, but it’s certainly an unusual one.
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June:28:2005 - 12:49
No law schools. No law schools. NO LAW SCHOOLS!
How, then, can there be rule-of-law in S.A., rather than rule-BY-law? Why did the U.S. not push for law school instruction aeons ago?
June:28:2005 - 13:57
That is indeed a major part of the problem. The Saudis are actively trying to reform their entire judicial process, but the emphasis will continue to be on Islamic law, i.e., the law of the land. The government has announced its intention to require better training so that people going into a court have a realistic expectation of justice. Right now, with some badly informed judges, that’s not always the case. It’s not transparency, but it is consistency.
But incursions of Shari’a law have been and continue to be made. Family and inheritance laws, for instance, are governed strictly by Shari’a law. But a change is that people are using lawyers to argue their cases and are willing to go public with many of them, if they feel they’ve been ill-used. And even though women are not “permitted” to practice law, they do so anyway, working with the clients, working up the cases, but leaving the courtroom activities to a male partner in the firm.