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Assoc. Prof. Dr. Jeff A. Redding

Saint Louis University

Curriculum VitaeJeff Redding

Jeff A. Redding studierte Wirtschaftswissenschaften und Soziologie an der Harvard University (B.A., magna cum laude) und promovierte mit Auszeichnung an der University of Chicago Law School. Von 2000 bis 2002 arbeitete er in Südasien, zunächst als Visiting Research Associate am Sustainable Development Policy Institute in Islamabad, Pakistan, später als Mitglied der Adjunct Faculty der Lahore University of Management Sciences in Lahore, Pakistan, und anschließend als Research Attorney des Lawyers Collective in Neu-Delhi, Indien. Nach seiner Rückkehr in die Vereinigten Staaten war Jeff A. Redding als Visiting Researcher am Islamic Legal Studies Program der Harvard Law School, als Fellow am Center for the Study of Law and Culture an der Columbia Law School und als Oscar M. Ruebhausen Fellow in Law an der Yale Law School tätig. Außerdem war er Assistant Professor of Political Science and Law an der American University in Kairo und juristischer Berater im Mumbaier Büro des Lawyers Collective.

Seit 2008 war Jeff A. Redding Assistant Professor an der Saint Louis University School of Law, wo er 2013 zum Associate Professor berufen wurde und Zivilprozessrecht und Rechtsvergleichung unterrichtet sowie ein Seminar zum Thema Rechtspluralismus gibt. Zugleich forschte Professor Redding von Dezember 2010 bis Juni 2011 am Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) in Paris und war von Mai bis Juni 2012 Visiting Professor an der Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) in Paris. Von Januar bis August 2014 war Jeff A. Redding Fellow am Käte Hamburger Kolleg „Recht als Kultur“.

Forschungsprojekt

The Rule and the Role of Islamic Law: Constituting Secular Law and Governance in Contemporary India

Islamic law’s relationship to secular governance has become a particularly fraught one in the contemporary period. Whether from the perspective of Islamic law’s advocates, secularism’s partisans, or publics caught in the two’s crossfire, few people see the relationship between Islam and secularism as anything but discordant. Moreover, the relationship between Islamic law and secularism seems increasingly antagonistic, with recent developments in the United States (e.g. social conservatives advocating ‘shari‘a amendments’ to state constitutions), Europe (e.g. member-states putting legal limitations on headscarves and mosques alike), and the Arab Middle East (e.g. conflicts between secularist old-guards and Islamist revolutionaries) indicating that unsteady and cold co-existences have increasingly transformed into outright heated hostilities. While North America, Europe, and the Arab Middle East are the sites of intense struggle between secularists and those sympathetic to Islamic legalism, in many ways, these particular struggles are relatively over-determined and intellectually uninteresting. For example, in North America and Europe, Islamic law is a relative newcomer and has been deeply marginalized by entrenched and powerful secularists. Conversely, in the Middle East, the birthplace of Islam (and other Abrahamic faiths), the West’s secular ideals have seemed utopian and historically tendentious—an unstable and ineffective relic of an out-of-touch colonialism. As a result, another location in which to explore secularism, Islam, and their complex interactions would seem to be much more intriguing, as well as necessary.

My book project “The Rule and the Role of Islamic Law: Constituting Secular Law and Governance in Contemporary India” chooses contemporary India as such a site, given that what is entrenched in India is not merely secularism or religion but, also, an especially lively debate between secularists and religious people of all persuasions, including Muslims. In focusing on India—and, in particular, the multifaceted operations of a system of non-state, Muslim dispute resolution service providers known as the dar ul qaza system—this book aims to challenge conventional and powerful narratives about the inevitable opposition between Islamic law and secular forms of governance. Indeed, this book will do this challenging work by examining the role that Islamic law plays in constituting the secular state in one crucially important Islamo-secular context, namely that of India.

Publikationen (Auswahl)

  • The Rule and the Role of Islamic Law: Constituting Secular Law and Governance in Contemporary India (in Vorbereitung).
  • The Case of Ayesha, Muslim ‘Courts’, and the Rule of Law: Some Ethnographic Lessons for Legal Theory, in: Modern Asian Studies (peer-reviewed) (im Erscheinen).
  • From ‘She-Males’ to ‘Unix’: Transgender Rights and the Productive Paradoxes of Pakistani Policing, in: Daniela Berti & Devika Bordia (Hrsg.): Anthropology of Criminal Cases in South Asia (im Erscheinen).
  • Islamic Law in South Asia: A Testament to Diversity, entry in: Anver Emon & Kristen A. Stilt (Hrsg.): Oxford Handbook of Islamic Law (im Erscheinen).
  • Secularism, the Rule of Law, and ‘Shari‘a Courts’: An Ethnographic Examination of a Constitutional Controversy, in: Saint Louis University Law Journal, 57/2, S. 339-376, 2013.
  • What American Legal Theory Might Learn from Islamic Law: Some Lessons from ‘Shari‘a Court’ Practice in India, in: University of Colorado Law Review, 83, S. 1027-1063, 2012.
  • Dignity, Legal Pluralism, and Same-Sex Marriage, in: Brooklyn Law Review, 75, S. 791-863, 2010.
  • Slicing the American Pie: Federalism and Personal Law, in: New York University Journal of International Law and Politics, 40, S. 941-1018, 2008.
  • Plural Legal Systems and Equality: The Pakistani Experience, in: Indira Jaising (Hrsg.): Men’s Laws, Women’s Lives: A Constitutional Perspective on Religion, Common Law and Culture in South Asia, S. 138-172, 2005.