The aim of this paper is to provide an analytical history of contemporary debates in Arabic surrounding modern political conceptions of wilayat al-faqih (guardianship of the legal scholar) and wilayat al-umma (guardianship of the community). The paper’s central claim—that there exists a rich body of writings among Arab Shi‘i political thinkers that offer critiques of and alternatives to the Iranian version of the just Islamic state—is put forth in two parts. In the first part, I examine debates among Shi‘i intellectuals in Lebanon and Iraq that circulated between 1970, when Khomeini presented a series of lectures in Najaf that became his major work wilayat al-faqih, and the aftermath of Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution. The paper’s second part looks closely at recent debates among Iraqi and Lebanese Shi‘i Islamists in order both to add complexity and nuance to Nasrallah’s assertions that Hizbullah is the party of wilayat al-faqih and to critically analyze an alternative to Khomeini's Iranian model of the rule of jurists, which is commonly traced to Muhammad Husayn Na'ini and Muhammad Jawad al-Mughniya. Focus on the two periods will allow study of the early and late works of Muhammad Husayn Fadlallah, Muhammad Mahdi Shams al-Din, and Muhammad Baqir al-Hakim, and a rich discussion among a number of lesser known clerics in the pages of al-Ghadir, the monthly journal of the Higher Shi‘i Council in Lebanon. Recent contributions by non-clerics--such as Wajih Kawthrani, Farah Musa and Mukhtar al-Asadi--will shed light on the reception of these ideas among a broader Shi‘i intellectual class.