Document Type
Article
Publication Date
4-1-2019
Abstract
This paper reproduces presentations made at the University of Tehran in March 2019 as part of the opening and closing remarks for a Conference on Criminal Law Development in Muslim-Majority Countries. The opening remarks discuss the challenges of codifying a Shari’a-based criminal code, drawing primarily from the experiences of Professor Robinson in directing codification projects in Somalia and the Maldives. The closing remarks apply many of those lessons to the situation currently existing in Iran. Included is a discussion of the implications for Muslim countries of Robinson’s social psychology work on the power of social influence and internalized norms that comes from criminal law’s tracking the shared judgments of justice of the community – “empirical desert” (included is a discussion in the closing remarks of the power of Tom Tyler’s “legitimacy” that is derived from fair and professional adjudication procedures).
Keywords
Islamic criminal law & procedure, Shari'a, justice, codification, fair notice, uniform application, moral credibility, proportionality, procedural fairness, conflicts with local norms, moral authority, social psychology, unpredictability, inconsistency, transparency, legitimacy
Repository Citation
Robinson, Paul H., "Codifying a Sharia-based Criminal Law in Developing Muslim Countries" (2019). Faculty Scholarship at Penn Carey Law. 2063.
https://scholarship.law.upenn.edu/faculty_scholarship/2063
Included in
Comparative and Foreign Law Commons, Criminal Law Commons, Criminal Procedure Commons, Criminology and Criminal Justice Commons, Islamic Studies Commons, Law and Society Commons, Multicultural Psychology Commons, Public Law and Legal Theory Commons, Religion Law Commons, Social Control, Law, Crime, and Deviance Commons