Law in Ancient Egypt


Book Description

Law in Ancient Egypt examines the legal philosophy, legal institutions, and laws of the ancient Egyptians. Ancient documents, accounts, and literature provide the basis for a wide perspective of law and the Egyptian legal system. VerSteeg delineates and analyzes the elements of Egyptian law, explaining how social, religious, cultural, and political forces shaped both the procedural and substantive aspects of law. Part I considers the theory of justice in ancient Egypt, exploring the role of law in society. Part I also traces the development of the judicial system distinguishing the various types of judges, courts, and procedures that were employed to make justice available to all. Part II reconstructs the substantive laws of the ancient Egyptians, including chapters detailing property, family law, inheritance and succession, tort and criminal law, contracts, and status. Land records, wills, sales documents, court chronicles, works of ancient fiction, and accounts of ancient trials illustrate the sophisticated, often subtle, and complex nature of law in ancient Egypt. This study provides an introduction to law in ancient Egypt. It is the first comprehensive overview of the subject written from the perspective of someone trained as an American lawyer who is also sufficiently familiar with the discipline of Egyptology. The book will be of interest to Egyptologists, legal historians, law students, and educated non-specialists who are interested in the interaction of law, history, and ancient culture.




Egypt and Its Laws


Book Description

Egyptian law is the main representative of the Arab civil-law family and its influence largely extends beyond its national borders. Foreign elements have mixed with Egyptian legacies to build up a new and original legal system. Egypt and its Laws is the first book in a Western language to present in a comprehensive, systematic and concise way comtemporary Egyptian law, case law and judicial organization. Egyptian law professionals - law faculty professor, high rank magistrates, attorneys have contributed to this project by outlining each branch of law or judicial order in a synthetic way. This includes: constitutional law, administrative law, civil law, personal status law, criminal law, commercial law, company law, tax law, labor and social law, land law, press law, procedural law, commercial arbitration, public and private international law as well as civil, criminal, administrative and constitutional adjudication. These contributions are preceded by a substantial introduction and followed by an English-Arabic glossary, an index, and tables of cited laws and cases.




State Law as Islamic Law in Modern Egypt


Book Description

This volume explores the recent decision by Egypt to constitutionalize sharīʿa and analyzes the Egyptian judiciary’s attempts to argue that sharī‘a is consistent with human rights. It will interest anyone studying Islamic law, constitutional thought in the Middle East, or Islam and human rights.




Islamic Law and Civil Code


Book Description

Richard A. Debs analyzes the classical Islamic law of property based on the Shari'ah, traces its historic development in Egypt, and describes its integration as a source of law within the modern format of a civil code. He focuses specifically on Egypt, a country in the Islamic world that drew upon its society's own vigorous legal system as it formed its modern laws. He also touches on issues that are common to all such societies that have adopted, either by choice or by necessity, Western legal systems. Egypt's unique synthesis of Western and traditional elements is the outcome of an effort to respond to national goals and requirements. Its traditional law, the Shari'ah, is the fundamental law of all Islamic societies, and Debs's analysis of Egypt's experience demonstrates how Islamic jurisprudence can be sophisticated, coherent, rational, and effective, developed over centuries to serve the needs of societies that flourished under the rule of law.




Mixed Courts of Egypt


Book Description

It is not possible to understand fully the modern Egyptian legal system and law withoiut a knowledge of the mixed courts of Egypt. This book provides essential material for understanding this system and shows the development of Egyptian law from its modern origins in 1875, through the social and economic changes of the First World War, the 1930s expansion, the Second World War and the pre-revolutionary monarchy. It concludes with an assessment of the influence of the Mixed Courts on the modern system. This thoroughly researched work will appeal to both the academic and practitioner involved in Middle East Law on a regular basis.




The Struggle for Constitutional Power


Book Description

For nearly three decades, scholars and policymakers have placed considerable stock in judicial reform as a panacea for the political and economic turmoil plaguing developing countries. Courts are charged with spurring economic development, safeguarding human rights, and even facilitating transitions to democracy. How realistic are these expectations, and in what political contexts can judicial reforms deliver their expected benefits? This book addresses these issues through an examination of the politics of the Egyptian Supreme Constitutional Court, the most important experiment in constitutionalism in the Arab world. The Egyptian regime established a surprisingly independent constitutional court to address a series of economic and administrative pathologies that lie at the heart of authoritarian political systems. Although the Court helped the regime to institutionalize state functions and attract investment, it simultaneously opened new avenues through which rights advocates and opposition parties could challenge the regime. The book challenges conventional wisdom and provides insights into perennial questions concerning the barriers to institutional development, economic growth, and democracy in the developing world.




Arbitration in Egypt


Book Description

Egypt, and in particular the Cairo Regional Centre for International Commercial Arbitration (CRCICA), has clearly cemented its status as a preferred seat for arbitration cases in both the Middle East–North Africa (MENA) region and the African continent. To assist parties with a need or desire to arbitrate disputes arising in these regions – whether commercial or investment – this incomparable book, the first in-depth treatment in any language of arbitration practice under Egyptian law, provides a comprehensive overview of the arbitration process and all matters pertaining to it in Egypt, starting with the arbitration agreement and ending with the recognition and enforcement of the arbitral award. Citing more than 2,500 cases – both awards and arbitral-related court judgments – the book’s various chapters examine in detail how Egypt’s arbitration law, based on the UNCITRAL model law, encompasses such internationally accepted arbitral provisions and aspects as the following: application of the New York Convention; concept of arbitrability; choice of applicable law; formation of the arbitral tribunal; selection, rights, duties, liability, and challenge of arbitrators; arbitral procedures; evidence and experts and burden of proof; form and content of arbitral awards; annulment and enforcement procedures; interaction between Sharia law and arbitration; role of Egypt’s Technical Office for Arbitration (TOA); and judicial fees. Special issues such as third-party funding and public policy as well as particular areas of dispute such as construction, sports, real estate, labor and employment, tax, competition, intellectual property, and technology transfer are all covered. The author offers practical guidelines tailored to arbitration in these specific areas of law. An added feature is the many figures and other visuals that accompany the text. For whoever is planning to or is currently practicing arbitration in the Middle East, this matchless book gives arbitrators, in-house counsel and arbitration practitioners everything that is needed to answer any question likely to arise. This book should be on the shelf of every practitioner and academic wishing to comprehend arbitration in Egypt as construed by the Egyptian Courts. Review/Testimonial: “The book is an excellent contribution to understand and assess Egyptian international arbitration law and practice and invaluable guide for lawyers, arbitrators and academics working on arbitration cases connected to Egypt for three main reasons: First, a case law perspective that adds considerable value to the book. The author examines not only the text of laws but also the case law. On every issue, Mr Shehata quotes the positions of Egyptian courts, especially those of the Egyptian Cassation Court. With more than 2,500 cases cited, the book is a precious source to discover the Egyptian decisions originally only in Arabic. Through an analysis and commentary of a great number of decisions rendered by various levels of Egyptian courts, the book offers the most reliable source with regard to the interpretation and the application of the Law No. 27 of 1994 and the international conventions by Egyptian courts. Second, a complete and far-reaching analysis. The book covers all aspects of the arbitration process from the arbitration agreement to the enforcement of arbitral awards. It includes the specific arbitration sectors such as sport arbitration, construction arbitration and investment arbitration. This coverage makes the book one of the reference work on the whole regime of arbitration in Egypt. Third, an up-to-date study, which takes into account rule changes and up-to-date developments on new trends, such as third-party funding, optional clauses, virtual hearings, the use of tribunal secretaries and issues of ethics in arbitration.” Source / Reviewer: Professor Walid Ben Hamida, University of Paris-Saclay, France. ICC DISPUTE RESOLUTION BULLETIN 2021 | ISSUE 3 |




Questioning Secularism


Book Description

What, exactly, is secularism? What has the West's long familiarity with it inevitably obscured? In this work, Hussein Ali Agrama tackles these questions. Focusing on the fatwa councils and family law courts of Egypt just prior to the revolution, he delves deeply into the meaning of secularism itself and the ambiguities that lie at its heart.




The Late Ottoman Empire and Egypt


Book Description

Law and identification transgressed political boundaries in the nineteenth-century Levant. Over the course of the century, Italo-Levantines- elite and common- exercised a strategy of resilient hybridity whereby an unintentional form of legal imperialism took root in Egypt. This book contributes to a vibrant strand of global legal history that places law and other social structures at the heart of competing imperial projects- British, Ottoman, Egyptian, and Italian among them. Analysis of the Italian consular and mixed court cases, and diplomatic records, in Egypt and Istanbul reveals the complexity of shifting identifications and judicial reform in two parts of the interactive and competitive plural legal regime. The rich court records show that binary relational categories fail to capture the complexity of the daily lives of the residents and courts of the late Ottoman empire. Over time and acting in their own self-interests, these actors exploited the plural legal regime. Case studies in both Egypt and Istanbul explore how identification developed as a legal form of property itself. Whereas the classical literature emphasized external state power politics, this book builds upon new work in the field that shows the interaction of external and internal power struggles throughout the region led to assorted forms of confrontation, collaboration, and negotiation in the region. It will be of interest to students, scholars, and readers of Middle East, Ottoman, and Mediterranean history. It will also appeal to anyone wanting to know more about cultural history in the nineteenth century, and the historical roots of contemporary global debates on law, migration, and identities.




Law and Enforcement in Ptolemaic Egypt


Book Description

This book investigates the law enforcement system of Ptolemaic Egypt (323-30 BC).