The political landscape in Pakistan has changed radically during the last two years. Amongst the many facets of this political transformation, two seem most consequential for the development of citizenship in the country. First, during the last two years, Pakistan has made a transition from military dictatorship to civilian governance based on relatively free and fair elections held in February 2008. Second, the judiciary in Pakistan at the end of 2009 is more independent than it has ever been in the country's history. In this paper, I argue that these two concurrent developments are the result of mobilization by the legal profession in Pakistan. In making this argument, I engage with the theoretical frameworks of the literatures on democratic transitions and political liberalism. I find that the recent political transition in Pakistan is better explained by the literature on political liberalism, which takes seriously the role played by the legal complex in moderating state power. For two reasons, however, the Pakistani case does not fit neatly within the analytical framework of the political liberalism approach, which provides an opportunity for theoretical refinement. First, the lawyers in Pakistan mobilized primarily in the streets for two years. Second, even though their struggle was focused on judicial autonomy, I argue that the Pakistani lawyers inadvertently spurred a democratic transition in the country. I conclude that intentionality does not predict the political consequences of mobilization. Even though the Pakistani lawyers mobilized for the narrow set of aims specified by the political liberalism approach, the intensity of their struggle had important externalities, which cannot be neglected when theorizing about the politics of the legal complex. Furthermore, the reinstated judiciary (post March 2009) is the most activist in the history of the country (as well as in the region), having passed judgments against excesses power by both the former military regime and the current civilian government. I argue that judicial activism in this period has enhanced the prospects for democratic governance, and was made possible through the enhanced legitimacy of the court following the two-year street movement in support of the rule of law.

This paper examines the role of the judiciary -criminal courts, the military courts and the State Security Court-- in prosecuting political dissent in Syria (1990-2010). It examines trends over time regarding the degree and nature of judicializing the repression of political dissent. The question whether variations in this respect matter in terms of the severity of punishment and, in view of that, the regime's reliance on coercive strategies is addressed. The paper argues that the main variables driving judicialization and associated variations in the venue and quality of 'justice' result from a complex of interconnected and complementary factors: (1) The Syrian regime's motives to develop, use, and rely on the judiciary for both ideological and tactical purposes; (2) shifting outcomes of struggles and competition among regime factions; (3) the regime's historical and evolving relations with the legal profession - lawyers and judges alike-- embedded in the overall power configurations underlying the rise, consolidation and reproduction of authoritarian rule. Finally, it will be explored whether and how the judicialization of political repression in Syria --against the odds of limited judicial independence-- furnished regime opponents and critics with avenues by which to contest authoritarian regime prerogatives and legitimacy. Key sources for this paper include: notes by foreign diplomats observing political trials in Syria; the author's own trial observations; the author's interviews with Syrian lawyers, officials, former detainees and human rights activists; Syrian official publications for lawyers and judges; the Syrian state-owned press; and reports by Syrian and international human rights organizations.

The Islamic Republic of Iran more than any other state in the Middle East pays meticulous attention to the concept of 'legality'. Due to the strong normative tradition of constitutionalism and the insistence on the unique republican character of the regime - all electoral manipulations notwithstanding, - the regime prides itself in its constitutional roots and the level of rights it de jure grants to its citizens. The Islamic Republic therefore exerts repression not so much through an elaborate apparatus of a surveillance bureaucracy, as most other authoritarian states of the Middle East do, but through the use of 'law'. Per certain clauses of the 1979 constitution, citizens de jure enjoy all political rights and civil liberties common to long-standing democracies. Iran also has a long-standing bar association (Kanoune Vokalaye Dadgostari), which in theory could create and preserve standards for an independent legal profession. The constitutionally-granted civil liberties are abrogated, however, by virtue of the fact that the unelected councils may interpret the constitution and limit such liberties with reference to their own interpretation of (non-positivized) Shii Jaafari law. The bar association in turn has frequently been neutralized through the interferences - always couched in applications of 'law' - by the judiciary, and was ultimately marginalized entirely in 2003 when the judiciary officially started to certify its own lawyers and judges. This paper examines the use of the judiciary on part of the executive (the Leader's office - Daftare Rahbari) during the past three presidencies: from Khatami, whose administration had declared as one of its principal goals the strengthening of the rule of law, to Ahmadinejad, for whom the republican character of the regime appears to be but an unnecessary ornament. The paper argues that through appointment policies, authoritarian interpretations of vaguely-defined competencies, the use of special courts, and the supplementation of constitutional provisions by a myriad of contradictory regulations, the executive has gradually succeeded in reversing the improvements in the rule of law reached during the Khatami administration and has de facto annexed the judicial complex as an extension of the Rahbar's office. The paper is based on interviews with lawyers and officials of the judiciary, a review of key appointments in the past years and developments in the realm of judicial reform (parliamentary reform proposals and de facto implementations), trial documentation, as well as reports by Iranian and international human rights organizations.

As ideological matrix of the Saudi state and political and religious tool, the Hanbalo-wahhabi doctrine and its guardians, the ul?mm', are a double-edged sword that the political authority wants to control at all costs. Since 1970's, the monarchy aims at bureaucratizing this religious elite in order to supervise its access and to contain its opinions. In this context, several instances are created: the Committee of Senior Ulama, the Ministry of Justice, the Supreme Judicial Council, etc. Successive Saudi kings attempt measures of reform and modernization in legislation, in standardization of "law" and in the administration of justice. The objective of this attempt is to "unify" and monopolize the authority around a central pole which would break the balance of the Saudi sociopolitical structure. But many of these have been ad hoc measures, some qualified, reversed or made redundant by uldmn' opposition. The present paper, based on a fieldwork, analyses to what extent the legal system is autonomous in Saudi Arabia. This will allow us to gauge how the ulume' maintain a certain hold over this domain. The analysis will focus on three points: the complementarity, the cooperation and the competition between the political power and the ullmp' about legal questions.