Islamic Legal Maxims as Substantive Canons of Construction: Ḥudūd-Avoidance in Cases of Doubt

Abstract

Legal maxims reflect settled principles of law to which jurists appeal when confronting new legal cases. One such maxim of Islamic criminal law stipulates that judges are to avoid imposing ḥudūd and other sanctions when beset by doubts as to the scope of the law or the sufficiency of the evidence (idra’ū ʾl-ḥudūd biʾl-shubahāt): the “ḥudūd maxim.” Jurists of all periods reference this maxim widely. But whereas developed juristic works attribute it to Muḥammad in the form of a prophetic report (ḥadīth), early jurists do not. Instead, they cite the maxim as an anonymous saying of nonspecific provenance in a form unknown to ḥadīth collectors of the first three centuries after Islam’s advent. This difference in the jurists’ citations of the maxim signals a significant shift in claims to legal authority and the asserted scope of judicial discretion, as jurists debated whether and how to resolve legal and factual doubt. While political authorities exercised increasingly wide discretion over criminal matters and used it to benefit the elite, most jurists promoted an egalitarian “jurisprudence of doubt” through insisting on criminal liability for high-status offenders and heightening claims of the authoritativeness and scope of the ḥudūd maxim as a ḥadīth.