Pakistans Experience with Formal Law
：An Alien Justice
( Cambridge Studies in Law and Society )
Publication subTitle ：An Alien Justice
Publication series ：Cambridge Studies in Law and Society
Author： Osama Siddique;
Publisher： Cambridge University Press
Publication year： 2013
E-ISBN: 9781316909171
P-ISBN(Paperback): 9781107038158
P-ISBN(Hardback): 9781107038158
Subject： D9 Law
Keyword： 法律
Language： ENG
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Description
This book explores the complex relationship between colonial law and the reform of legal systems in postcolonial states. Identifying the disconnection between literature on colonial legal systems and their postcolonial reform projects, this book analyzes why reform routinely fails. It will be of interest to scholars of South Asia, alongside professionals, students and general readers intrigued by the persistence of socially alienating legal systems in developing countries. Identifying the disconnection between literature on colonial legal systems and their postcolonial reform projects, this book analyzes why reform routinely fails. It will be of interest to scholars of South Asia, alongside professionals, students and general readers intrigued by the persistence of socially alienating legal systems in developing countries. Law reform in Pakistan attracts such disparate champions as the Chief Justice of Pakistan, the USAID and the Taliban. Common to their equally obsessive pursuit of 'speedy justice' is a remarkable obliviousness to the historical, institutional and sociological factors that alienate Pakistanis from their formal legal system. This pioneering book highlights vital and widely neglected linkages between the 'narratives of colonial displacement' resonant in the literature on South Asia's encounter with colonial law and the region's postcolonial official law reform discourses. Against this backdrop, it presents a typology of Pakistani approaches to law reform and critically evaluates the IFI-funded single-minded pursuit of 'efficiency' during the last decade. Employing diverse methodologies, it proceeds to provide empirical support for a widening chasm between popular, at times violently expressed, aspirations for justice and democratically deficient reform designed in distant IFI headquarters that is entrusted to the exclusive and unaccountable Pakistani 'reform club'. Introduction; 1. The hegemony of heritage: the 'narratives of colonial displacement' and the absence of the past in Pakistani reform narratives; 2. Law in practice: the Lahore district courts litigants survey (2010–2011); 3. Law, crime, context and vulnerability: the Punjab crime perception survey (2009–2010); 4. Approaches to legal and judicial reform in Pakistan: postcolonial inertia and the paucity of imagination in times of turmoil and change; 5. Reform on paper: a post-mortem of justice sector reform in Pakistan from 1998–2010; 6. Reform nirvanas and reality checks: justice sector reform in Pakistan in the twenty-first century and the monopoly of the 'experts'; 7. Towards a new approach; Appendices. 'A fascinating and troubling study of Pakistan's judicial system: its history misunderstood by its acolytes, its practice unaltered by countless reforms, its operations a tribulation for its constituents. Siddique analyzes the limits of scholarly reflection and well intentioned reform by placing them alongside the perceptions, strategies and experiences of those who use the system. A powerful and broad-ranging cautionary tale.' David Kennedy, Harvard Law School 'Pakistan's Experience with Formal Law is a critical exploration of a system that is simultaneously familiar and alien. It departs decisively from all the official and approved pronouncements on legal reform, combining a rich experiential account of the frustrations of law in Pakistan (and throughout South Asia) with a provocative analysis of impoverished agendas of reform that fail to address the perpl
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