The Rule of Law in the Arab World: Courts in Egypt and the Gulf.

• Author: CANNON, BYRON
• Position: Review

The Rule of Law in the Arab World: Courts in Egypt and the Gulf. By NATHAN J. BROWN. Cambridge Middle East Studies, vol. 6. Cambridge: CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS, 1997. Pp. Xvii + 258. $59.95.

Some might consider that this work is actually two books in one, and therefore might have been more readable if presented as two monographs: a very extensive one on Egypt, and a shorter study on court history in the Gulf region. The author has nonetheless chosen a challenging analytical theme. He proposes to compare the ways in which legal reform, wherever undertaken in the Arab World, exhibits degrees of influence of three factors: externally imposed standards, movement toward a liberal order, and centralization of an authority vested in the state. The project may appear to be overly ambitious, given the number of points that would have to be made over a very extensive period of time (over a century and a half for Egypt) to reach convincing conclusions concerning the hypotheses offered. On the other hand, readers will not find in any other volume a more complete compendium of valuable information on court operations and legal reforms in Egypt and the Gulf.

Among the three factors cited above, the latter two seem to provide more opportunities to the author for offering new perspectives on the central role of legal reform in studying the internal dynamics of the contemporary Middle East. The first factor, externally imposed standards, which is the most straight-forward analytically, remains essentially an historical subject, which Brown develops nicely in the (particularly well documented) Egyptian case. It appears to be more easily understood and immediately accessible in the Gulf sections, if only because that particular factor functioned at much less complicated levels, at least in the period of British ascendancy prior to the 1970s.

Exploring the roots and modes of application of jurisdictional authority in any case study provides a key to understanding how perceptions of the relationship between individual rights and responsibilities and state rights and responsibilities vary from culture to culture. Since Egypt's experience began early and since many other Arab states relied on the Egyptian model as they adapted their legal systems to the demands of modern practice, Brown's attention to the many different elements of Egyptian court history that might or might not be transferable to other countries is one of the strong features of this book. Since...