Religion & Law

Today at St. Thomas we're hosting a symposium on Islamic Law and Constitutional Liberty.  Participants include Noah Feldman, MoJer Russ Powell, Haider ala Hamoudi, Ali Khan, Clark Lombardi, John Bowen, Joel Nichols, and Rep. Keith Ellison (the first practicing Muslim elected to Congress), among others.  I've only been able to make it to a couple of sessions, but they were interesting: Noah Feldman had an interesting analysis of the three levels of relationship between Sharia law and constitutional liberty (political, philosophical, and institutional), and Russ Powell used the example of Turkey to caution against "essentializing" Islamic law. 

One talk that I found especially fascinating was by Clark Lombardi, who told the story of Alvin Robert Cornelius, a devout Catholic who served as the chief justice of the Pakistani Supreme Court during the 1960s.  Surprisingly (to me anyway), Justice Cornelius was also a major proponent of the Islamization of the Pakistani legal system, arguing that there is a plausible version of Islamic law that is fundamentally liberal, and that the public would accept judges as authoritative intepreters of Islamic law.  Prof. Lombardi suggests that Cornelius may have been more correct that we assume, and that some degree of Islamization may be necessary for the rule of law in majority-Muslim countries.