Avi Rubin
My research interests lie in the area of Ottoman socio-legal history, with a focus on the nineteenth-century. My first book (Ottoman Nizamiye Courts: Law and Modernity, Palgrave Macmillan, 2011) and articles address various aspects of the passage of the Middle East to modernity, the rule of law in the modern Middle East, and the social history of late Ottoman Palestine. My second book, titled Ottoman Rule of Law: The Yildiz Case (Syracuse University Press, 2018), is a discussion on the intersection of Ottoman legalism with the concept of the rule of law.
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Books by Avi Rubin
The alleged murder of the former sultan and the trial that ensued were political dramas that captivated audiences both domestically and internationally. The high-profile personalities involved, the international politics at stake, and the intense newspaper coverage all rendered the trial an historic event, but the question of whether the sultan was murdered or committed suicide remains a mystery that continues to be relevant in Turkey today. Drawing upon a wide range of narrative and archival sources, Rubin explores the famous yet understudied trial and its representations in contemporary public discourse and subsequent historiography. Through the reconstruction and analysis of various aspects of the trial, Rubin identifies the emergence of a new culture of legalism that sustained the first modern political trial in the history of the Middle East.
Papers by Avi Rubin
Küreyerelleşme (yerel özellikleri koruyarak küreselleşme, glokalleşme) perspektifinden bakıldığında Tanzimat dönemi Osmanlı kanunları, başka ülkelerdeki gibi sosyo-hukukî alanda modernliğin temel göstergeleri olarak öne çıkmaktadır.
reforms. Nevertheless, the actual meaning of this notion is rarely
clarifed in the writing on the late Ottoman Empire although theorists
of law have discussed the ambiguity of this term. This article aims at
examining the value of the rule of law as an analytical category when
discussing socio-legal change in the late Ottoman Empire. The article
demonstrates that the rule of law can be a meaningful category for
historical analysis when conceived through a ‘cultural perspective’ to
the law.
Professional attorneyship emerged in the Ottoman Empire in tandem with the consolidation of the Nizamiye (“regular”) court system during the late 19th century. This article analyzes the
emergence of an Ottoman legal profession, emphasizing two developments. First, the Nizamiye courts advanced a formalist legal culture, exhibited, inter alia, by the expansion of legal procedure.
Whereas the pre-19th century court of law was highly accessible to lay litigants, the procedural-
ization of court proceedings in the 19th century limited the legibility of the judicial experience to legal experts, rendering legal counseling almost indispensible in civil and criminal litigation. Second, the reformers made efforts to render state-granted legal license a sign of professional competence, presenting a formal distinction between the old “agents” (vekil s), who lacked formal legal training, and the professional “trial attorneys” ( dava vekils). In practice, however, lawyers
of both categories had to adapt to the Nizamiye formalist culture."
second half of the nineteenth century. I argue that new judicial mechanisms allowed both the state and private individuals to contest each other in financial matters.
Due to the high cost of the Nizamiye judicial process, however, the opportunity to challenge the state in the civil courts was limited to individuals who possessed significant financial assets. By the same token, the resources available to the state bolstered its ability to secure tax revenues by resorting to civil litigation."
The alleged murder of the former sultan and the trial that ensued were political dramas that captivated audiences both domestically and internationally. The high-profile personalities involved, the international politics at stake, and the intense newspaper coverage all rendered the trial an historic event, but the question of whether the sultan was murdered or committed suicide remains a mystery that continues to be relevant in Turkey today. Drawing upon a wide range of narrative and archival sources, Rubin explores the famous yet understudied trial and its representations in contemporary public discourse and subsequent historiography. Through the reconstruction and analysis of various aspects of the trial, Rubin identifies the emergence of a new culture of legalism that sustained the first modern political trial in the history of the Middle East.
Küreyerelleşme (yerel özellikleri koruyarak küreselleşme, glokalleşme) perspektifinden bakıldığında Tanzimat dönemi Osmanlı kanunları, başka ülkelerdeki gibi sosyo-hukukî alanda modernliğin temel göstergeleri olarak öne çıkmaktadır.
reforms. Nevertheless, the actual meaning of this notion is rarely
clarifed in the writing on the late Ottoman Empire although theorists
of law have discussed the ambiguity of this term. This article aims at
examining the value of the rule of law as an analytical category when
discussing socio-legal change in the late Ottoman Empire. The article
demonstrates that the rule of law can be a meaningful category for
historical analysis when conceived through a ‘cultural perspective’ to
the law.
Professional attorneyship emerged in the Ottoman Empire in tandem with the consolidation of the Nizamiye (“regular”) court system during the late 19th century. This article analyzes the
emergence of an Ottoman legal profession, emphasizing two developments. First, the Nizamiye courts advanced a formalist legal culture, exhibited, inter alia, by the expansion of legal procedure.
Whereas the pre-19th century court of law was highly accessible to lay litigants, the procedural-
ization of court proceedings in the 19th century limited the legibility of the judicial experience to legal experts, rendering legal counseling almost indispensible in civil and criminal litigation. Second, the reformers made efforts to render state-granted legal license a sign of professional competence, presenting a formal distinction between the old “agents” (vekil s), who lacked formal legal training, and the professional “trial attorneys” ( dava vekils). In practice, however, lawyers
of both categories had to adapt to the Nizamiye formalist culture."
second half of the nineteenth century. I argue that new judicial mechanisms allowed both the state and private individuals to contest each other in financial matters.
Due to the high cost of the Nizamiye judicial process, however, the opportunity to challenge the state in the civil courts was limited to individuals who possessed significant financial assets. By the same token, the resources available to the state bolstered its ability to secure tax revenues by resorting to civil litigation."