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ABSTRACT
The prevalence of a culture of law at a sample of 36 Arab universities is studied in this study. It examines four dimensions of the culture of law: reference to law and its related terms in the universities discourse; teaching of law programmes and law courses; activities practised at the university that raise legal topics; and perceptions of faculty and students on the existence of a culture of law at the university. The results showed that the culture of law is fair to weak. There was not a single university in the sample that was classified as ‘above average’ in terms of the four dimensions. Five universities – all private – were classified as ‘below average’, one of which was religious and the others for-profit. Both expressions ‘rule of law’ and ‘culture of law’ were absent from the discourse. Unlike the discourse, there was not a single university lacking in the law curricula, be it programmes or courses. The existence of a college of law at a university contributes to the expansion of the culture of law at the university. The culture of law is further expanded as well at private not-for-profit universities in comparison with for-profit ones. Public universities in Tunisia lag behind other Arab universities in discourse due to their lack of interest in developing websites, whereas they are ahead in curricula and perceptions. Paradoxically, almost nothing has been written about the issue of culture of law (and the rule of law) in Arab universities. Although there is an abundance of writing on academic freedom, it does not fill the gap. It is not the remit of this paper to investigate the rule of law at Arab universities; that would require data collection on facts, practices and stories, although such a project is badly needed. Instead, it investigates the culture of law, since the author believes it is a reliable indicator of the status of the rule of law.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author).
Notes
1 Council of Ministers Decision Number 42, dated March 19, 1997 (putting a stop to recruitment to teach at the Lebanese University except under the approval of the Council of Ministers).
2 On this issue, Ibrahim Haider wrote in Nahar newspaper:
Some college deans who have received the lists of new teachers have indicated that a number of the names are unknown to them and [they] have never heard of them. These teachers do not have hours of teaching at the pertinent colleges and the deans speculate that the names were added to the file in the past weeks once the political bazaar on full-time employment entered the halls of education that led to the addition of names on new lists of certain political parties[’] loyalists which contributed to raising the number from 800 to 1,213 while some names that deserve full-time employment have been removed … (Al-Nahar, December 29, 2014).
3 These included universities that had five sentences or irrespective of the other two scales.
4 These included universities that had 22 sentences or more on condition that its percentage is above average.
5 These included universities that did not fall within the two previously mentioned categories.
6 The universities that have teaching programmes on law while lacking a law college are: Abu Dhabi University, the American University of Beirut, the American University of Cairo, Princess Nora Bint Abdul Rahman University and Suez Canal University. The five universities that lack both a law college and a programme are: Manouba University (Tunisia), Esprit University and October 6 University (Egypt), the American University of Kuwait, Al Ahlia Bahrain University, and Sanaa University in Yemen.
7 Practically, there are 17 out of a total of 36 universities that do not offer courses entitled ‘university requirement’: the Moroccan, Tunisian, Algerian, Iraqi and Yemeni universities and some of the universities in Egypt and Lebanon.
8 Its percentage is above average (4.3) by 1.7 points.
9 Its percentage is below average (4.3) by 1.7 points.
10 The titles of the activities range between demands for reconsideration of law and legislation, legal matters, separation of legislative, judiciary and executive branches, constitutional law, the law and the practice, the law and the environment, electoral law, healthcare law, state of law, legal awareness etc.
11 This includes the availability of knowledge, anti-corruption, participatory steering, responsibility, governance etc.
12 This includes the law and ethics of individual property and professional conduct.
13 The survey was conducted at each university by way of individual interviews with three deans, three department heads in addition to two focus groups composed of a number of professors and two focus groups composed of a number of students. These individual and group interviews were conducted at both the humanities and scientific colleges.
14 This is due to the risk of the same questions being interpreted differently.
15 In the curricula scale, we gave each of the seven universities a mid-range position B. In the ‘Perceptions’, we assumed that (1) the ratings received by Egyptian universities are applicable to the public universities in the Gulf countries and the Levant; and (2) the same rules apply to the commercial universities in the other countries as they did for October 6 University and Esprit University. (3) It is difficult to speculate on the perception of the culture of law for the American University of Cairo and Princess Nora Bint Abdul Rahman University in Saudi Arabia and, therefore, we assigned them a mid-range position B – similar to what they got on other scales in the first place.
16 Abdel Malek Essaidi University, Oran University, Hassan II University, Alger University, Birzeit University and Sanaa University.