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The Vanishing Victim: Criminal Law and Gender in Jordan

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2024

Catherine Warrick
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Abstract

Focusing on the issues of rape and honor killings in the Arab world, particularly Jordan, this article investigates the use of criminal laws as an element in political legitimation. These laws are an arena for contestation not merely over policy choices, but over the nature of the sociopolitical order as well. Recent debates over the alteration or preservation of such laws have highlighted the use of legal codes as an expression of dominant values in a political system. I argue that the use of gendered legal systems to serve legitimation claims has important implications for the prospects of democratization.

Type
Articles of General Interest
Information
Law & Society Review , Volume 39 , Issue 2 , June 2005 , pp. 315 - 348
Copyright
© 2005 Law and Society Association.

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Footnotes

The research presented in this article was gathered in part with the assistance of a Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research grant for field research in Jordan. I am grateful to the editor, three anonymous reviewers, and Matthew DeBell for their help in improving the present article, and to Nathan Brown, Michael Hudson, Mark Warren, and Judith Tucker, who read and commented on an earlier version. Any remaining errors are of course my responsibility rather than theirs.

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