On the Specificity of Middle Eastern Constitutionalism

René Maunier, a prolific French ethnologist and jurist (1887-1951), summed up in 1935 the radical transformation of Middle Eastern law since the nineteenth century. In a brief report entitled Outline of the Progress of Law in Muslim Land, he noted the centrality of law in the immense change affecting the societies of North Africa that he knew: "Amongst the social changes which can take place, one should put first legal changes. In Islamic countries, there have been sometimes, over more than one hundred and fifty years already, a transformation of legislation, and a transformation of jurisdiction: new laws, new judges. This transformation (which was at times evolution, at times revolution) is an important occurrence, which can busy an investigator who is at once a jurist and a sociologist. Rara avis!"