The Egyptian Civil Code, first established in 1949 by jurist Abd El-Razzak El-Sanhuri with input from Edouard Lambert of the University of Lille, serves as the foundational civil law for Egypt. Influenced by the French civil law model, it regulates business and commerce but excludes family law, distinguishing it from the Turkish civil code. Article 1 mandates that, absent legislation, a judge should decide by custom, then Islamic law, and if unavailable, natural law and equity. The code has inspired many Middle Eastern nations’ legal systems including Jordan, Bahrain, and Qatar, as well as the newly introduced Saudi Civil Code in 2023.
Historical background
Egypt began legal reform in 1875 when it gained independence from the Ottoman Empire in judicial and legal matters, which led to the establishment of the Mixed Courts to deal with foreigners and national courts. This necessitated a need for a set of laws that had secular influence. When Egypt obtained the needed international agreement for the union of its legal system in 1937, it started to draw up a new series of comprehensive codes. Most of this effort was overseen by the Egyptian jurist Abd El-Razzak El-Sanhuri. The code was originally drafted in 1942, but went through several revisions before its passage in 1949.
Its author, Al-Sanhuri, stayed loyal to his vision of having judges rule in accordance with the code itself before considering using Shari’a, which had not been codified for a long time. For the first time in the modern history of the Arab Middle East, the Shari’a would be used to back up a secular document. With the civil code as the principal source of law, all Shari’a courts were abolished. The writing of the civil code was an attempt on the part of Al-Sanhuri to modernize Islamic law by adopting ideas from western civil law, a concept greatly supported by the elite members of Egyptian society. Westernization meant confining certain Islamic law to mostly matters dealing with personal status such as marriage, divorce, and inheritance.
British colonization led to some shift to the common law, but the common law had little long-term impact on the legal systems of many countries that fell under British rule where there was an existing codified system. Thus civil law, mostly of French origins, now prevails throughout the Middle East, and the occasional remnants of common law are likely not to survive (with the exception of Israeli law which remains largely based on common law as it pertains to non-private matters). As a result, the modern legal systems of Middle Eastern countries share the basic features of French law, such as relying on complete and logical statements of the law in codes as official sources of law, keeping a sharp division between public and private law and between commercial and private law.4
See also
Bibliography
- Bechor, Guy. The Sanhuri Code, and the Emergence of Modern Arab Civil Law (1932 To 1949), (2007), ISBN 9789004158788.
- Hoyle, Mark, The Mixed Courts of Egypt, (1991), ISBN 1-85333-321-2.
External links
- Hans W. Baade, Transplants of Laws and of Lawyers, University of Texas colloquia paper
- Mohamed Mattar, Islamic Law, Common Law, and Civil Law: The Place of Islamic Law in the Legal Family
- Anne E. Mayer, Modern Law: Varieties in Legal Systems in Middle Eastern Countries
- Egypt, Arab Republic of
References
"Between Identity And Redistribution: Sanhuri, Genealogy And The Will To Islamise » Brill Online". Ingentaconnect.com. 2001-06-01. Retrieved 2015-11-25. http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/brill/ils/2001/00000008/00000002/art00003 ↩
Bälz, Amereller-Kilian; Fawzy, Farah (2023-10-30). "The New Saudi Civil Code (2023) - a Primer". Lexology. Retrieved 2024-04-10. https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=405f5399-e676-4b01-8a6c-3762bc90f6cc ↩
"Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na'im". Law.emory.edu. 2015-09-27. Retrieved 2015-11-25. http://www.law.emory.edu/ifl/legal/egypt.htm#text ↩
"The Most Trusted Place for Answering Life's Questions". Answers. Retrieved 2015-11-25. http://www.answers.com/topic/modern-law ↩