This volume identifies 34 countries and provides a comprehensive overview of their legal systems, examining the relationship between the plurality of personal laws and the principle of equality.
Today, a plurality of personal statuses in family matters persists in a significant number of African and Asian countries. This volume identifies 34 countries as presenting this configuration and provides a comprehensive overview of their legal systems, examining the relationship between the plurality of personal laws and the principle of equality. After a long period of stability dating from the colonial era, these countries are seeing more and more conflicts involving the plurality of personal status laws. The work takes a comparative and multi-disciplinary approach to understand the different aspects and levels involved in this heterogeneity and link them with the concepts of equality and non-discrimination. The first part of the book presents the concepts used to analyse personal status laws in their historical, sociological, ethnographic, and legal contexts. The chapters in the second part, each devoted to a country or in some cases a group of neighbouring countries, are written by specialists drawn from a large international and interdisciplinary pool. With its multi-disciplinary approach, including law, history and anthropology, the work will be a major contribution to the field of “socio-historical jurisprudence”. It will be of interest to academics and researchers working in the areas of socio-legal studies, human rights, religion-inspired law and law and politics.
Preface; Introduction, Nathalie Bernard-Maugiron, Baudouin Dupret and
Jean-Louis Halpérin; Part 1: Personal Status Laws and Minorities;
1. Personal
Status in Historical Context, Jean-Louis Halpérin;
2. Accounting for Legal
Pluralism in Action: A Case Study of Interfaith Marriage in Indonesia and its
Praxeological Implications, Ayang Utriza Yakin and Baudouin Dupret;
3.
Countries Falling Outside the Scope of the Research, Nathalie
Bernard-Maugiron and Zohra Aziadé Zemirli;
4. From a Static Typology to a
Typology of Dynamic Tensions, Jean-Louis Halpérin, Radhika Kanchana and Zohra
Aziadé Zemirli; Part 2: Countries Witnessing Tensions with the Principle of
Equality;
5. The Imbroglio of Personal Status in Cameroon between
Multi-Ethnicity, Multiculturalism and Equality, Thérèse Atangana-Malongue;
6.
The Long-Standing Quest for the Unification of Egyptian Family Law, Nathalie
Bernard-Maugiron and Karim El-Chazli;
7. Personal Status Laws in India: An
Ambiguous Path Towards a Uniform Civil Code, Jean-Philippe Dequen;
8.
Personal Status Law in Indonesia: Discursive and Practical Debate on Equality
(Between Muslims and Non-Muslims), Euis Nurlaelawati;
9. Personal Status Law
in Israel: A Country Witnessing Tensions with the Principle of Equality, Ido
Shahar;
10. Kadhi Courts and the Persistence of Legal Pluralism in Kenya's
Family Law System, Zohra Aziadé Zemirli;
11. The Principle of Equality and
the Pluralism of Personal Status: Reflections based on the Lebanese System,
Léna Gannagé;
12. Personal Law in Malaysia: A Tale of Different Systems
Tensions between Plurality and Equality, Kerstin Steiner;
13. Legal and
Religious Pluralism in Nigeria, Deborah Scolart;
14. Palestine: "Yasser
Arafat Could Have Done What Bourguiba Did, but There's No Room for That Now",
Lynn Welchman;
15. Equality in Senegalese Law: Senegal's Family Code on a
Knife-Edge, Marième N'diaye;
16. Equality and Plural Personal Status Laws in
Tanzania: Tensions between Customary Law, State Law, and International Law,
Laurean L. Mussa and Erin E. Stiles; Part 3: Countries Witnessing Gaps in the
Implementation of Legal Pluralism in Practice;
17. Examining the Gaps:
Implementation of Personal Status Laws and Constitutional Inequality in
Bangladesh, Anisur Rahman;
18. Through an Islamic Lens: Inequalities in
Brunei's Personal Status Laws, Ann E. Black;
19. Shi'i Jurisprudence and the
Structure of Personal Status Law in Iran, Hengameh Hoveyda;
20. The
Vicissitudes of Personal Status Pluralism in Iraq: A New Tower of Babel?,
Harith Al-Dabbagh;
21. The Absence of a Unified Civil Code in Jordan:
Implications for Women and Religious Minorities, Zohra Aziadé Zemirli;
22.
Statutory Weakening and Bureaucratic Hurdles in the Implementation of Legal
Pluralism in Myanmar, Elizabeth Rhoads;
23. A Right to Inequality? Islam and
the Development of Pakistan's Personal Status Law System from Independence to
the Present, Martin Lau;
24. Sudan's Legal Framework on Personal Status Laws,
Equality and non-Discrimination, Mohamed Abdelsalam Babiker;
25. From
Confessional Mosaic to Legal Mosaic: Syrian Personal Status Codes, Tarek Al
Asfary; Part 4: Countries Witnessing Mild Tension with the Principle of
Equality;
26. Personal Status Laws in Ethiopia: a Country Witnessing Tensions
with the Principle of Equality, Katrin Seidel;
27. A Near Theocracy for
Personal Status Gender-Based Discrimination in The Gambia's Marriage and
Divorce Laws, Raeesa Rajmohamed;
28. Plurality of Personal Status Laws in
Ghana, a Country Witnessing Tensions with the Principle of Equality, Fulera
Issaka-Toure;
29. The Mufti System and Islamic Law in Western Thrace, Greece,
Yüksel Sezgin;
30. Jewish Law in a Muslim Country: The Survival of Rabbinical
Courts in Morocco, Tachfine Baida;
31. The Case of Muslimness in Filipino
Legal Pluralism, Megumi Kagawa;
32. Challenges to the Applicability of the
Principle of Equality: The Case of Formal and Informal Jurisdictions in
Niger, Mali and Chad, Abdou Samadou Yahaya;
33. Personal Laws in Singapore: A
Balancing Act between Plurality and Equality, Kerstin Steiner;
34.
Constitutional Preservation of Inequalities: Application of Personal Status
Laws in Sri Lanka, Binendri Perera;
35. Legal Pluralism Tolerated: The
Implementation of Sharia Law in Thailand's Southernmost, Eugénie Mérieau
Nathalie Bernard-Maugiron is a senior researcher at the French National Research Institute for Sustainable Development (IRD), France, and adjunct faculty at Sciences Po Paris.
Baudouin Dupret is a directeur de recherche, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, France, at Sciences Po Bordeaux, and visiting professor at the University of Louvain, Belgium.
Jean-Louis Halperin is a professor at the Ecole Normale Supérieure, Paris, France, emeritus since January 1, 2026.
Radhika Kanchana is a post-doctoral fellow at the Centre for the Theory and Analysis of Law (CTAD) at the University of Paris Nanterre, France.
Ayang Utriza Yakin is an assistant professor of Islamic Legal and Ethical Tradition at the Universiti Brunei Darussalam (UBD), Brunei Darussalam, and a research associate at the Université Catholique de Louvain (UCLouvain), Belgium, and at Sciences Po Bordeaux, France.
Zohra Aziadé Zemirli is an associate researcher in law at Centre Arabe de Recherches et dEtudes Politiques (CAREP), France and a postdoctoral fellow at Centre Population et Développement (Ceped), Université Paris Cité, IRD, Université Sorbonne Paris Nord, Inserm.
