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Full-Text Articles in Law
Strategies Of Muslim Family Law Reform, Kristen Stilt, Swathi Gandhavadi
Strategies Of Muslim Family Law Reform, Kristen Stilt, Swathi Gandhavadi
Faculty Working Papers
Family law in Muslim-majority countries has undergone tremendous change over the past century, and this process continues today with intensity and controversy. In general, this change has been considered one of "reform," defined loosely as the adoption of national laws to modify the rules of Islamic law (fiqh) that had been applicable and predominant in the particular country in an effort to improve the rights of women and children. In most Muslim-majority contexts, however, the rules of fiqh remain particularly (and in some jurisdictions uniquely) relevant in the area of family law, and the reform process is usually presented as …
The Limits Of Constructivism: Can Rawls Condemn Female Genital Mutilation?, Andrew Koppelman
The Limits Of Constructivism: Can Rawls Condemn Female Genital Mutilation?, Andrew Koppelman
Faculty Working Papers
The strategy for coping with value pluralism that Rawls has proposed is to permit political decisions, at least with respect to basic rights, to depend only on those goods that can be inferred from the bare requirements of respectful relations between persons. His account offers such a parsimonious conception of the good that it cannot cognize some atrocities. I focus on one extreme human rights case: the practice of female genital mutilation (FGM), which, it is well established, violates basic human rights. Doubtless Rawls was appalled by the practice. Yet his theory cannot generate a basis for condemning it. A …