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1917 books match the query 'Law' and 2 start with q

cover of Questioning Secularism: Islam, Sovereignty, and the Rule of Law in Modern Egypt

Questioning Secularism

Islam, Sovereignty, and the Rule of Law in Modern Egypt

Hussein Ali Agrama

University of Chicago Press, 2012

The central question of the Arab Spring—what democracies should look like in the deeply religious countries of the Middle East—has developed into a vigorous debate over these nations’ secular identities. But what, exactly, is secularism? What has the West’s long familiarity with it inevitably obscured? In Questioning Secularism, Hussein Ali Agrama tackles these questions. Focusing on the fatwa councils and family law courts of Egypt just prior to the revolution, he delves deeply into the meaning of secularism itself and the ambiguities that lie at its heart.
 
Drawing on a precedent-setting case arising from the family law courts —the last courts in Egypt to use Shari‘a law—Agrama shows that secularism is a historical phenomenon that works through a series of paradoxes that it creates. Digging beneath the perceived differences between the West and Middle East, he highlights secularism’s dependence on the law and the problems that arise from it: the necessary involvement of state sovereign power in managing the private spiritual lives of citizens and the irreducible set of legal ambiguities such a relationship creates. Navigating a complex landscape between private and public domains, Questioning Secularism lays important groundwork for understanding the real meaning of secularism as it affects the real freedoms of a citizenry, an understanding of the utmost importance for so many countries that are now urgently facing new political possibilities.
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cover of Questions of Sovereignty: Pyramid Lake and the Northern Paiute Struggle for Water and Rights

Questions of Sovereignty

Pyramid Lake and the Northern Paiute Struggle for Water and Rights

Andrew W. Carey

University of Nevada Press, 2027

Questions of Sovereignty examines the enduring struggle of the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe to assert and exercise sovereignty in defense of its most sacred homeland: Pyramid Lake. At the center of this story is a century-long fight over water, law, and survival that reveals how Indigenous nations navigate a political landscape in which tribal sovereignty is both recognized and continually challenged.

Indian tribes retain inherent powers of self-governance, yet those powers are often tested when they conflict with powerful state, federal, and private interests. Using the Pyramid Lake Paiute experience as a case study, author Andrew W. Carey demonstrates how tribal sovereignty functions in practice.

At the heart of the narrative is water—the lifeblood of Pyramid Lake and the Truckee River system that feeds it. Decades of diversion and development left the lake in ecological and cultural crisis. As competing interests sought control of the region’s water, the tribe engaged in legal and political battles to secure the resources essential to its survival.

Spanning late twentieth-century litigation and negotiations into the twenty-first century, Questions of Sovereignty reveals how the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe used law, governance, and persistence to protect its homeland. In doing so, it offers a powerful example of Indigenous resilience and a deeper understanding of sovereignty as a living force shaping environmental justice and tribal self-determination.

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