CAS Initiative Lecture: "Can the Islamic Shari`a Be Constitutionalized?" by Nathan J. Brown

• Event Date: Tuesday, April 8, 2014
• Time: 4:00 pm–5:30 pm (CDT)
• Location: Knight Auditorium, Spurlock Museum, 600 S. Gregory St., Urbana, IL
• Cost: Free Admission

• Talk

The Center for Advanced Study's Initiative on Cultures of Law in Global Contexts is an ongoing project pursuing interdisciplinary scholarship in the humanities and law. We take as our focus the frictions obtaining among multiplicities of justice, including issues of social order and state power, terrorism and ultranationalism, sustainability and economic development, and medical law and ethics. We explore the vexed history of applying international law principles developed in the West; the imposition of ideas of personhood through biomedical ethics and law; inter-state collaboration and conflict in defining terrorism; cultural approaches to financial regulation and monetary policies; and problems in law and economics arising from globalization.

"Can the Islamic Shari`a Be Constitutionalized?" Nathan J. Brown Political Science and International Affairs, Elliott School of International Affairs, The George Washington University

Many states in predominantly Muslim societies have written constitutions that go beyond proclaiming Islam the official religion to promising some role for Islamic law in the constitutional order. Such clauses seem to mix law of divine origin with that of human origin. Why are such clauses inserted and what is their real effect?

This Center for Advanced Study event is sponsored by the Center for Advanced Study, College of Law, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures, Department of English, Department of Gender and Women's Studies, George A. Miller Endowment, and Ledyard R. Tucker Fund with additional support from the Center for African Studies and the Center for South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies.