Samenvatting

My current research concerns contemporary judicial practices in Tunisia. I focus on what I call ‘delicate fields of law’, such as domestic violence, unmarried cohabitation, children born out of wedlock, virginity, abortion, etc. Such topics are delicate in any given society, as they are related to a fundamental ‘symbolic order’ (Françoise Héritier). Because of their sensitive character, the legislation concerning these topics is generally characterized by vague and open norms, leaving much interpretational freedom to judges. My research examines how Tunisian judges deal with these discretionary powers.
I conducted fieldwork in Tunis for a period of fourteen months (2008-2009), when I collected court decisions, attended court hearings and interviewed judges, lawyers and litigants. To treat these empirical data, I developed a non-culturalist approach that is both praxiological and ethnomethodological.
My research is praxiological as I treat legal practice as an object of investigation in itself (en tant que tel, Dupret), instead of using legal practice as a medium to study society (‘mirror thesis’, Tamanaha). This means that I describe how Tunisian judges apply open norms in delicate fields of law, without interpreting from a meta-level why judges apply the law in one way or another. However, this does not mean that my study remains merely descriptive. For the interpretation of what judges do, I follow the ethnomethodological approach.