The Islamic Rule of Lenity: Judicial Discretion and Legal Canons

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Intisar Raab 

 16 August 2021 

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 Assistant Professor of Law, Boston College Law School; Research Affiliate,Harvard Law School, Islamic Legal Studies Program. For many insightful commentson this and earlier drafts, I am grateful to Asl

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 Bâli, Paulo Barrozo, ChristopherBeauchamp, Michael Cook, Noah Feldman, Dan Kahan, Anthony Kronman, HosseinModarressi, Vlad Perju, Aziz Rana, Bertrall Ross, Lena Salaymeh, Kim LaneScheppele, Laura Weinrib, James Q. Whitman, Adnan Zulfiqar, and participants ofworkshops at Harvard Law School, Princeton University’s Law and Public AffairsProgram, and the Annual Meeting of the Law and Society Association

The Islamic Rule of Lenity: Judicial Discretion and Legal Canons

Intisar A. Rabb

 

ABSTRACT

 

This Article explores an area of close parallel between legal doctrines in the contexts of Islamic law and American legal theory. In criminal law, both traditions espouse a type of “rule of lenity”—that curious common law rule that instructs judges not to impose criminal sanctions in cases of doubt. The rule is curious because criminal law is a peremptory expression of legislative will. However, the rule of lenity would seem to encourage courts to disregard one of the most fundamental principles of Islamic and American legislation and adjudication: judicial deference to legislative supremacy. In the Islamic context, such a rule would be even more curious, allowing Muslim judges to disregard a deference rule even more entrenched than the American one: a divine legislative supremacy to which judicial deference should be absolute. Yet, there is an “Islamic rule of lenity” that pervades Islamic criminal law. This Article examines the operation of and justifications for the lenity rule in the American and Islamic contexts against the backdrop of theories of law and legislative supremacy that underlie both. In both contexts, the lenity rule acts serves to expand the operation of judicial discretion. But whereas the use of American lenity is fraught and limited, Islamic lenity is relatively uncontroversial and expansive. With the Islamic rule of lenity, we see both stronger legislative supremacy doctrines and more assertions (albeit hidden) of judicial authority to legislate. An examination of the role of lenity in Islamic law with respect to American law explains differences in the scope and exercise of judicial discretion in.

Full Article:  (6) (PDF) "The Islamic Rule of Lenity," Vanderbilt Journal of Trans...

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