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FROM LEGAL REPRESENTATION TO ADVOCACY: ATTORNEYS AND CLIENTS IN THE OTTOMAN NIZAMIYE COURTS

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2012

Avi Rubin
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Abstract

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 proceduralization 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” (vekils), 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.

Type
Articles
Information
International Journal of Middle East Studies , Volume 44 , Issue 1 , February 2012 , pp. 111 - 127
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2012

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References

NOTES

1 For the emergence of the Nizamiye courts and their institutional structure, see Bingöl, Sedat, Tanzimat Devrinde Osmanlı’da Yargı Reformu: Nizâmiye Mahkemelerinin Kuruluşu ve İşleyisi 1840–1876 (Eskişehir, Turkey: Anadolu Üniversitesi, 2004)Google Scholar; Ekinci, Ekrem Buğra, Osmanlı Mahkemeleri: Tanzimat ve Sonrası (Istanbul: Arı Sanat, 2004)Google Scholar; and Demirel, Fatmagül, Adliye Nezareti: Kuruluşu ve Faaliyetleri, 1876–1914 (Istanbul: Boğaziçi Üniversitesi, 2007)Google Scholar. For a sociolegal history of the Nizamiye courts, see Rubin, Avi, Ottoman Nizamiye Courts: Law and Modernity (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 See, for instance, Anderson, J. N. D. and Coulson, Joel, “Islamic Law in Contemporary Cultural Change,” Saeculum 18 (1967): 2CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Starr, June, Law as a Metaphor: From Islamic Courts to the Palace of Justice (Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press, 1992)Google Scholar.

3 Rubin, Avi, “Ottoman Judicial Change in the Age of Modernity: A Reappraisal,” History Compass 7 (2008): 119–40CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On the Nizamiye courts as a case of legal borrowing, see idem, “Legal Borrowing and Its Impact on Ottoman Legal Culture in the Late Nineteenth Century,” Continuity and Change 22 (2007): 279–303. For the reforms in the Şeriat court system during the 19th century, see Akiba, Jun, “From Kadı to Naib: Reorganization of the Ottoman Sharia Judiciary in the Tanzimat Period,” in Frontiers of Ottoman Studies: State, Province, and the West, ed. Imber, Colin and Kiyotaki, Keiko (London: I. B. Tauris, 2005), 43–60Google Scholar; and Feyzioğlu, Hamiyet Sezer, Tanzimat Döneminde Kadılık Kurumu ve Şer'i Mahkemelerde Düzenlemeler (Istanbul: Kitabevi, 2010)Google Scholar.

4 Bingöl, Tanzimat Devrinde Osmanlı’da Yargı Reformu; Ekinci, Osmanlı Mahkemeleri; Demirel, Adliye Nezareti.

5 The standard source for evaluations of the performance of the Nizamiye courts was Heidborn, Adolf, Manuel de droit public et administratif de l'Empire ottoman (Vienne-Leipzig, Austria: C. W Stern, 1908)Google Scholar. Though informative with regard to the administration of the courts, it offers little on sociolegal aspects, and it exhibits the standard European cultural conventions on Ottoman administration.

6 A rare exception is a register of some sixty cases that were addressed in 1887 at the criminal Nizamiye court of first instance in Jaffa. Gerber, Haim, Ottoman Rule in Jerusalem, 1890–1914 (Berlin: Klaus Schwarz, 1985), 143–59Google Scholar.

7 Tamanaha, Brian Z., On the Rule of Law: History, Politics, Theory (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 77–78CrossRefGoogle Scholar. This conceptualization of the judicial process has been subject to a vast body of scholarly criticism for many decades, mainly from the perspective of legal realism and critical legal studies. In a nutshell, critical legal scholars present legal formalism as a myth that conceals the fact that adjudication is always a highly interpretive act; all judicial processes are imbued with conflicting interests and reflect dynamic power fields and power relations. For summaries of the debate between the two conceptualizations, see Leiter, Brian, “Legal Realism and Legal Positivism Reconsidered,” Ethics 111 (2001): 278–301CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Brooks, Roy L., Structures of Decision Making: From Legal Formalism to Critical Theory (Durham, N.C.: Carolina Academic Press, 2005)Google Scholar; and McCormick, John P., “Three Ways of Thinking ‘Critically’ about the Law,” American Political Science Review 93 (1999): 413–28CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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13 Rubin, Ottoman Nizamiye Courts, 87–96.

14 Düstur, 1st ed., vol. 5, 853–54; Hukuk 44 (1895): 713–14.

15 “Code of Civil Procedure,” articles 231–50.

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20 Ibid.

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30 Düstur, 1st ed., vol. 3, 198. For earlier references to legal representation, yet with no requirement for licensing, see, for example, “Şurayı Devlet Dahili Nizamnamesi,” Düstur, 1st ed., vol. 1, 707; and “Divan-ı Ahkam-ı Adliye Nizamnamesi,” Düstur, 1st ed., vol. 1, 328.

31 On the development of the bar association, see Özman, Aylin, “The Portrait of the Ottoman Attorney and Bar Associations: State, Secularization and Institutionalization of Professional Interests,” Der Islam 77 (2000): 319–37Google Scholar.

32 Bingöl, Tanzimat Devrinde Osmanlı’da Yargı Reformu. For changes in the training of the naibs, who served as court presidents in the civil sections of the Nizamiye courts, see Akiba, Jun, “A New School for Qadis: Education of Sharia Judges in the Late Ottoman Empire,” Turcica 35 (2003): 125–63CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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34 The exam included eight questions on the Mecelle, three questions on the land commercial law, four questions on the Code of Commerce, three questions on the Criminal Code, and eight to ten general questions on the Law of Maritime Commerce and the procedural codes. Ceride-i Mehakim, no. 76 (1881): 601.

35 “Dava Vekillerinin İmtihanına Dair Nizamname,” Düstur, 1st ed., 4th supplement, 35; Ceride-i Mehakim, no. 3 (1879): 20–21; no. 76 (1881): 601.

36 Ceride-i Mehakim, no. 362 (1886): 3711.

37 According to Yörük, many of the law school graduates preferred the career paths of judges and public prosecutors, while only a minority chose to work as advocates. Yörük, “Mekteb-i Hukuk'un Kuruluşu,” 166, 168.

38 Law schools operated in Baghdad, Beirut, Selanik, and Konya. See Reid, Donald M., Lawyers and Politics in the Arab World, 1880–1960 (Minneapolis, Minn., and Chicago: Bibliotheca Islamica, 1981), 78–79Google Scholar; and Ergin, Osman, Türkiye Maarif Tarihi, 2nd ed. (Istanbul: Eser Matbaası, 1977)Google Scholar.

39 Ceride-i Mehakim, no. 76 (1881): 601.

40 Yörük, “Mekteb-i Hukuk'un Kuruluşu,” 177–78.

41 Brun, Nathan, Shoftim ve Mishpetanim be Eretz Israel: Beyn Kushta le Yerushalayim, 1900–1930 (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 2008), 66–67Google Scholar.

42 Rubin, Ottoman Nizamiye Courts, 63–68; Agmon, Family and Court, 74.

43 Agmon, Family and Court, 194. To the best of my knowledge, this is currently the only study that systematically analyzes litigation in the reformed Şeriat courts.

44 Ibid., 123.

45 Ibid., 175.

46 Ceride-i Mehakim, no. 773 (1894): 11488–489.

47 In this period, efendi was a general title of respect, a gentleman, whereas bey was assigned to dignitaries of various sorts.

48 “Mehakim-i nizamiye dava vekilleri hakkında nizamname,” Düstur, 1st ed., vol. 3, 198–209.

49 Duben, Alan and Behar, Cem, Istanbul Households: Marriage, Family and Fertility 1880–1940 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 36–38Google Scholar.

50 Mecelle, article 1, 791.

51 Ceride-i Mehakim, no. 370 (1886): 3839.

52 Agmon, Family and Court, 173.

53 Ibid., 194.

54 Ceride-i Mehakim, no. 52 (1880): 411.

55 Ceride-i Mehakim, no. 615 (1891): 8967–969; no. 616 (1891): 8975–978.

56 For the complete protocol of the case, see Ceride-i Mehakim, no. 466 (1888): 5278–286; no. 467 (1888): 5295–301.

57 Ibid., 5300–5301.

58 For a critical discussion of the omnipresent convention of Westernization, see Rubin, “Ottoman Judicial Change.”

59 Benton, Lauren, Law and Colonial Cultures: Legal Regimes in World History, 1400–1900 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002)Google Scholar.

60 On the impact of German legal thought on modern legal doctrines, for instance, see Reimann, Mathias, “Nineteenth Century German Legal Science,” Boston College Law Review 31 (1990): 837–97Google Scholar.

61 Jennings, “The Office of Vekil.”

62 Weber, Economy and Society.

63 In addition to the revisionist studies mentioned previously, see Miller, Ruth A., Legislating Authority: Sin and Crime in the Ottoman Empire and Turkey (New York: Routledge, 2005)Google Scholar.

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