One of the primary reasons for the re-promulgation in 1908 of the Ottoman Constitution of 1876 was the rationalization and centralization of power within the hands of the state, namely the Committee of Union and Progress and the Ottoman parliamentary government. Central to the achievement of these CUP goals was the reform of the Ottoman criminal justice system. Beginning in earnest in 1911, the CUP led Ottoman Parliament enacted sweeping revisions to the 1858 Imperial Ottoman Criminal Code, created a centralized Ottoman Prison System, and commenced the most extensive prison reforms even undertaken within the empire. Based upon the records of Ottoman parliamentary proceedings, the Imperial Ottoman Penal Code, and the archival documents from the Ottoman Prison Administration, this paper briefly examines the development, proclamation, and implementation of these penal reforms. Attempts undertaken to reform these complex criminal codes were not new in 1911. New codes exhibiting a distinct European influence had been adopted and augmented over the course of the nineteenth century, beginning as early as 1840. Much of current scholarship characterizes these reforms as evidence of a general trend towards increasing secularization and Westernization of the Ottoman criminal justice system culminating with the complete abrogation of Islamic criminal law in 1917. I argue, however, that criminal legal reforms over the course of the late Ottoman Empire should not be interpreted as a secularizing process, but as a concerted effort by the central government to adapt Western legal practices to their established Islamic legal institutions in an attempt to rationalize and centralize power over criminal justice within the hands of the state. This was not the aping of Western criminal justice practices, but a calculated adoption and adaptation that ended up creating a new criminal justice dynamic unique to Ottoman modernity.

The development of a second phase of constitutionalism is evident in Lebanon through the Conseil Constitutionnel. It is the supreme court in Lebanon for actions and acts as a court of individual liberties and rights based on the constitutional laws of the Lebanese Republic. While not active recently, the court has established itself as a strong check on the government. The court is based on the French Conseil Constitutionnel and this paper seeks to argue that the two courts, while being very similar, are not one and the same. The Conseil d’Etat in Lebanon displays key differences from its French counterpart. While a decision of the Conseil Constitutionnel in France will take up no more than a page and will do little to explain its reasoning, the Conseil Constitutionnel in Lebanon spends considerable time in its decisions both explaining its reasoning, dividing its decisions into sections, and attempting to more close resemble the style of decision that appears in common law countries. But there is something else that is truly profound in the decisions made by the Conseil Constitutionnel: they refer to France and French commentary on laws. Interspersed with their writings in Arabic are “jurisprudences” from France. This is unique in the Arab world, but very much like the relationship the U.S. court system has with the United Kingdom. This paper posits that this relationship and dialogue is at once unique, Arab, and European. These overlapping spheres create a dialogue between the court and, ultimately, the Lebanese people.

The practice of targeted assassinations is an important tool used by both Israeli and Palestinian security personnel in the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict. At home and in the street, trials and evidence give way to killings without redress. Oftentimes, unintended targets also suffer at the hands of masked gunmen who then flee as quickly as they came. Justifications of emergency and exceptionality allow for a space that is seemingly lawless and without limits. Through a discursive reading of Israeli jurisprudence, witness statements and official statements on the policy, however, this paper seeks to explore the intimate and integral relationship between law and these operations. Far from being simply alegal or even illegal, Palestinian and Israeli actors can draw on a myriad of legal narratives to constitute and construct killings with legal largesse. What is the normative framework currently applicable to targeted killings? How can we apply this to its practice in Palestine/Israel and how do different actors narrate their relationship with the law? Are there shared tactics used by Palestinian and Israeli personnel and what does this suggest about the nature of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict more broadly? Thus, through a critical appraisal of discursive and legal material, the paper seeks to shed light on how we should make sense of targeted assassinations as scholars of law and as scholars of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.