LAW’S FRAGILE STATE
How do a legal order and the rule of law develop in a war-torn state? Using his field research in Sudan, the author uncovers how colonial administrators, postcolonial governments, and international aid agencies have used legal tools, practices, and resources to promote stability and their own visions of the rule of law amid political violence and war in Sudan. Tracing the dramatic development of three forms of legal politics – colonial, authoritarian, and humanitarian – this book contributes to a growing body of scholarship on law in authoritarian regimes and on human rights and legal empowerment programs in the global South. Refuting the conventional wisdom of a legal vacuum in failed states, Mark Fathi Massoud reveals how law matters deeply even in the most extreme cases of states still fighting for political stability. Mark Fathi Massoud is Assistant Professor in the Politics Department and Legal Studies Program at the University of California, Santa Cruz. He received the Law and Society Association Dissertation Prize and the American Political Science Association Edward S. Corwin Award for the best dissertation in public law.