Palgrave Macmillan has released
Law, State, and Society in Modern Iran: Constitutionalism, Autocracy, and Legal Reform, 1906-1941, by
Hadi Enayat. The publisher describes the book as follows:
Incorporating history, sociology, and rule of law studies, this book
sheds light on an understudied but fascinating dimension of
modernization in Iran, namely the emergence of a new legal system
between the 1906 Constitutional Revolution and the end of Reza Shah's
rule in 1941. While Iranian constitutionalism can be seen as part of a
global trend of constitutional revolutions at the turn of the twentieth
century, in Iran, an unusual institutional and historical background
shaped a path to legal reform that was in many ways unique. Among other
factors, the scholastic legalism of the Shi'i ulama and the considerable
autonomy they enjoyed in administering the civil law in the nineteenth
century made legal reform a particularly contested, difficult, and
politically charged aspect of state building.
A few blurbs:
"Law, State, and Society in Modern Iran offers a perceptive
examination of the impact of legal reforms on the process of state
building and modernization in the first half of twentieth century in
Iran. Its use of a wide range of primary source material will be
particularly welcomed by historians of the period, and its broad
analytical approach should make it indispensable for comparative studies
of legal reforms in the wider context of the Middle East and current
debates on constitutional development." -- Ali Gheissari
"Legal transformations of codes, institutions, and
procedures constituted a crucial motor in the formation of political
modernity and the modern state in Iran. This book contains lucid and
original accounts and analyses of the events and processes in these
transformations, rich in the details of political struggles and
ideological contests, not only between the entrenched clerical hierarchy
and the modernizing constitutionalists but also within and across both
camps. This is key to understanding the subsequent fractured evolution
of Iranian state, society, and revolution." -- Sami Zubaida
