Nafay Choudhury
Harvard University, Harvard Law School, Department Member
- University of Cambridge, St Catharine's College, Post-Docadd
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Based on fourteen months of ethnographic research on the central money exchange bazaar in Kabul, Afghanistan-Sarai Shahzada-this article examines the micro-dynamics of legal change within a close-knit community in a fragile setting. For... more
Based on fourteen months of ethnographic research on the central money exchange bazaar in Kabul, Afghanistan-Sarai Shahzada-this article examines the micro-dynamics of legal change within a close-knit community in a fragile setting. For most of its history, the bazaar has been governed by informal legal norms. New state-building measures after 2001 led to increased efforts by the state to regulate the bazaar, causing money exchangers to initiate internal transformations to protect their autonomy. While scholarship generally argues that state coercion substitutes for private legal norms, this study shows the centrality of the state in consolidating the bazaar legal system. Exchangers have cast their non-state legal system in the image of the state by formalizing new operating rules that have introduced a management structure and dispute resolution forum. New state licenses have also helped to safeguard the boundaries of the bazaar. This article contributes to private governance and legal pluralism scholarship by revealing that a private community, even in a fragile state, may be capable of maintaining an autonomous non-state legal system not in spite of, but rather by depending on, the state.
Research Interests:
This article explores the creation, circulation, and regulation of informal trade credit or “ograyi” in Afghanistan. The practice of ograyi allows businesses to access short-term credit, either from their suppliers or third-parties, to... more
This article explores the creation, circulation, and regulation of informal trade credit or “ograyi” in Afghanistan. The practice of ograyi allows businesses to access short-term credit, either from their suppliers or third-parties, to acquire specified goods. This paper provides an account of the non-legal practices that regulate ograyi transactions. Ograyi vitally depends on the development of trust between parties. Clientelism helps maintain stable relationships that can offset market unpredictability. Widespread market norms and practices establish the general behaviour of participants. Parties also renegotiate the terms of the contract if circumstances make it impossible for the creditor to repay the loan in the agreed time frame. Furthermore, bank credit remains largely unavailable or unappealing to many businesses, and the legal system provides limited recourse in the case of contractual breach. Thus, the non-legal practices regulating ograyi serve as a substitute for legal coercion.
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Research Interests:
Research Interests:
This paper focuses on the operation of madrasas in Afghanistan. While numerous projects, initiatives and studies have focused on education generally in Afghanistan, considerably less attention has been directed towards madrasas... more
This paper focuses on the operation of madrasas in Afghanistan. While numerous projects, initiatives and studies have focused on education generally in Afghanistan, considerably less attention has been directed towards madrasas specifically. Part of the reason can be attributed to the unclear role they play in the wider efforts to provide education across the country and the difficulty of formally including them within the nation-building project. The claim of this paper is that madrasas in Afghanistan are by and large localised and community-driven. The localised nature of Afghan madrasas can be understood as the product of the political tensions throughout the country’s history between a state marked by tenuous authority and dispersed communities closely observant of unwelcome state interference. Moreover, the government lacks the resources and reach to provide educational services in many rural areas, thereby tacitly relying on localised madrasa to provide a base level of education to much of the population. Understanding the entanglements between education, politics and authority is crucial for appreciating the unique space that madrasas inhabit within the country.
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This paper revisits the concept of critical legal pluralism, which treats the individual as a site of normativity with the capacity to create legal knowledge. To help operationalize the usage of critical legal pluralism, I propose a... more
This paper revisits the concept of critical legal pluralism, which treats the individual as a site of normativity with the capacity to create legal knowledge. To help operationalize the usage of critical legal pluralism, I propose a methodological approach that places the individual's ability to makes choices along a continuum. On one side of continuum, legal pluralism can be viewed as facilitating fully discrete choices that ascribe to one legal order or another. On the other side, the ability to make individual choices is curtailed because of the presence of a hegemonic legal order. This simple continuum helps to shed light on the complex considerations that affect individual choices, which in turn affect how various legal orders are legitimated. The paper then considers how critical legal pluralism can enrich the discussion on the legal system of Afghanistan, focusing on interviews with two Afghan justice actors: a former judge and an active defence lawyer.
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Research Interests:
Kabul Carnival uses the stories and experiences of Afghan women to analyse the multivariate, overlapping, and at times conflicting narratives that have arisen in the process of postwar reconstruction in Afghanistan.
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This study looks into some of the reasons why women face obstacles to economic empowerment and tries to make recommendations on what reforms could be brought, whether legal, regulatory, or policy. It is a combination of analytical... more
This study looks into some of the reasons why women face obstacles to economic empowerment and tries to make recommendations on what reforms could be brought, whether legal, regulatory, or policy. It is a combination of analytical research and an empirical survey of individual stakeholders from a diversity of backgrounds. The study looks into two broad categories: business activities and inheritance. Various business practices serve as obstacles to women entrepreneurs and thus need to be revised. Furthermore, inheritance is an important way in which women can gain access to real property, which they could then use to seek a loan. However, the widespread practice in Afghanistan is to prevent a female from accessing her inheritance rights. Both the topics of business activities and inheritance are widely canvassed and recommendations are put forward on how the economic condition of women can be improved.
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This article explores the creation, circulation, and regulation of informal trade credit or “ograyi” in Afghanistan. The practice of ograyi allows businesses to access short-term credit, from either their suppliers or third parties, to... more
This article explores the creation, circulation, and regulation of informal trade credit or “ograyi” in Afghanistan. The practice of ograyi allows businesses to access short-term credit, from either their suppliers or third parties, to acquire specified goods. This paper provides an account of the non-legal practices that regulate ograyi transactions. Ograyi vitally depends on the development of trust between parties. Clientelism helps to maintain stable relationships that can offset market unpredictability. Widespread market norms and practices establish the general behaviour of participants. Parties also renegotiate the terms of the contract if circumstances make it impossible for the creditor to repay the loan in the agreed timeframe. Furthermore, bank credit remains largely unavailable or unappealing to many businesses, and the legal system provides limited recourse in the case of contractual breach. Thus, the non-legal practices regulating ograyi serve as a substitute for legal...
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
This paper revisits the concept ofcriticallegal pluralism, which treats the individual as a site of normativity with the capacity to create legal knowledge. To help operationalize the usage of critical legal pluralism, I propose a... more
This paper revisits the concept ofcriticallegal pluralism, which treats the individual as a site of normativity with the capacity to create legal knowledge. To help operationalize the usage of critical legal pluralism, I propose a methodological approach that places the individual’s ability to makes choices along a continuum. On one side of continuum, legal pluralism can be viewed as facilitating fully discrete choices that ascribe to one legal order or another. On the other side, the ability to make individual choices is curtailed because of the presence of a hegemonic legal order. This simple continuum helps to shed light on the complex considerations that affect individual choices, which in turn affect how various legal orders are legitimated. The paper then considers how critical legal pluralism can enrich the discussion on the legal system of Afghanistan, focusing on interviews with two Afghan justice actors: a former judge and an active defence lawyer.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Copyright © Windsor Review of Legal and Social Issues 2010 All rights reserved. ... !"#$%&$'()*'#'+,-$'(.&*/'(0$,*1,.#'23'"(,$%(/$%/4+#3','(0-$2&+%,+$."(3%.35$ $ Editor-in-Chief... more
Copyright © Windsor Review of Legal and Social Issues 2010 All rights reserved. ... !"#$%&$'()*'#'+,-$'(.&*/'(0$,*1,.#'23'"(,$%(/$%/4+#3','(0-$2&+%,+$."(3%.35$ $ Editor-in-Chief Windsor Review of Legal and Social Issues Faculty of Law, University of Windsor ...
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Research Interests:
Based on fourteen months of ethnographic research on the central money exchange bazaar in Kabul, Afghanistan—Sarai Shahzada—this article examines the micro-dynamics of legal change within a close-knit community in a fragile setting. For... more
Based on fourteen months of ethnographic research on the central money exchange bazaar in Kabul, Afghanistan—Sarai Shahzada—this article examines the micro-dynamics of legal change within a close-knit community in a fragile setting. For most of its history, the bazaar has been governed by informal legal norms. New state-building measures after 2001 led to increased efforts by the state to regulate the bazaar, causing money exchangers to initiate internal transformations to protect their autonomy. While scholarship generally argues that state coercion substitutes for private legal norms, this study shows the centrality of the state in consolidating the bazaar legal system. Exchangers have cast their non-state legal system in the image of the state by formalizing new operating rules that have introduced a management structure and dispute resolution forum. New state licenses have also helped to safeguard the boundaries of the bazaar. This article contributes to private governance and l...
Research Interests:
This paper provides an overview of the new law program at AUAF, from the establishment of the first law courses to today's full law degree. One significant observation to take from AUAF is that the law program pursues a uniquely... more
This paper provides an overview of the new law program at AUAF, from the establishment of the first law courses to today's full law degree. One significant observation to take from AUAF is that the law program pursues a uniquely heterodox and poly-jural approach to legal education where civil law, Islamic law, and traditional justice each form integral components of the curriculum. Hopefully, detailing the law program will provide insights for similar rule of law endeavors in developing and conflict regions. Part II of the Article provides an overview of legal pluralism in Afghanistan. Even a cursory glance at Afghanistan's legal history reveals the normative legal tensions between civil law, Islamic law, and traditional justice. Each of these traditions commands a certain level of authority in Afghanistan. Part III of the article explains how the notion of legal tradition, rather than legal system, serves as a better basis for legal education. By temporarily leaving the jur...
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Legal pluralism, properly understood, offers a rich analysis of Afghanistan’s legal system. The limited analysis of legal pluralism in current scholarship on Afghanistan may be due in part to the fuzziness that surrounds the very concept... more
Legal pluralism, properly understood, offers a rich analysis of Afghanistan’s legal system. The limited analysis of legal pluralism in current scholarship on Afghanistan may be due in part to the fuzziness that surrounds the very concept of legal pluralism itself. Charting through the apparent fuzziness, by recognizing the diversity of legal pluralism theories, as well as their inconsistencies and shortcoming, can provide a new approach to analyzing Afghanistan’s complex legal system. Part one of this paper will review the present scholarship on legal pluralism, covering some of the approaches taken by leading scholars in the field. Of key importance is the need to distinguish the so-called notions of “state” legal pluralism and “deep” legal pluralism, as well as to identify some of the major criticisms levied against the legal pluralism project. Part two will analyze some of the current scholarship on Afghanistan’s legal system. In light of the discussion on legal pluralism, it wil...
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Book review: Legal Reform and Business Contracts in Developing Economies: Trust, Culture and Law in DakarPaquinJulie, Legal Reform and Business Contracts in Developing Economies: Trust, Culture and Law in Dakar, Ashgate: Farnham, UK, 2012; ix + 166 pp.: ISBN, USD 149.95 (hardcover). ISBN: 978-1-4...more
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... 19 Naafay Choudhury (McGill University) Reconceptualizing Legal Pluralism in Afghanistan 21-52 ... 70 Mark Fassen (University of Ottawa) Amending Fair Dealing: a Response to 'Why Canada Should Not Adopt Fair Use' 71-107 ...