The article sheds fresh light on socio-legal change in the Ottoman Empire during the late nineteenth century by focusing on the legal culture that emerged in the newly established Nizamiye court system. It is argued that a characteristic Nizamiye discourse that emphasized procedure mirrored the syncretic nature of this judicial system. This syncretism was a typical outcome of legal borrowing, encompassing both indigenous and foreign legal traditions. In addition, the article points to the possible impact of the new legal culture on judicial strategies employed by litigants. The accentuation of procedure opened up new litigation opportunities for the wealthier classes while disadvantaging and alienating the lower strata of society. Yet Ottoman law also provided some legal solutions for the lower orders.
Codification was a founding feature of Ottoman legal reform from the 1840s until the demise of the empire. This article seeks to situate the Ottoman project of codification in the context of the global codification momentum, which set the ground for a transnational common imagination of the law during the “long nineteenth century”. When analyzed from the perspective of glocalization, Ottoman codes, much like codes elsewhere, stand out as essential signifiers of modernity in the socio-legal sphere.
Legal reform was a key element in the passage of the Ottoman empire to modernity during the ‘long nineteenth century’. This article discusses the modern historiography of Ottoman judicial change while taking issue with the notions of secularization and westernization, which are omnipresent in the conventional legal history of the nineteenth century. An alternative conceptualization is called for, one that is free from the dichotomous and homogenizing binarity of religious/secular, thus allowing more nuanced representations of sociolegal change in general.
is article is a first exploration of Ottoman civil litigation involving state agencies and private litigants, following the foundation of the Nizamiye court system in the second half of the nineteenth century. I argue that new judicial mechanisms allowed both the state and private individuals to contest each other in financial matters. Due to the high cost of the Nizamiye judicial process, however, the opportunity to challenge the state in the civil courts was limited to individuals who possessed significant financial assets. By the same token, the resources available to the state bolstered its ability to secure tax revenues by resorting to civil litigation.
AbstractProfessional attorneyship emerged in the Ottoman Empire in tandem with the consolidation of the Nizamiye (“regular”) court system during the late 19th century. This article analyzes the emergence of an Ottoman legal profession, emphasizing two developments. First, the Nizamiye courts advanced a formalist legal culture, exhibited, inter alia, by the expansion of legal procedure. Whereas the pre-19th century court of law was highly accessible to lay litigants, the proceduralization of court proceedings in the 19th century limited the legibility of the judicial experience to legal experts, rendering legal counseling almost indispensible in civil and criminal litigation. Second, the reformers made efforts to render state-granted legal license a sign of professional competence, presenting a formal distinction between the old “agents” (vekils), who lacked formal legal training, and the professional “trial attorneys” (dava vekils). In practice, however, lawyers of both categories had to adapt to the Nizamiye formalist culture.
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