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Nonetheless, the tendency of forum shopping to veer towards rational choice theory does
not mean that the concept is inherently flawed. Shahar proposes a different understanding of
forum shopping: “Rather than being a free choice taken under conditions of full knowledge, clear
priorities, and unlimited resources, forum shopping is bounded by partial information and
uncertain priorities and results.” 92 As he explains, there were significant limits to legal
consumers’ ability to determine which forum might prove most beneficial. Moreover, other
considerations affect the decisions of legal consumers, such that forum shopping is also
determined “by a different, broader kind of rationality that is morally and ideologically
informed.” 93
Shahar’s critique of forum shopping also bears on models of society which put the
individual—rather than communal allegiances such as religion or tribe—at the center of
understanding people’s actions, including their legal choices. Such an individual-based model
has been articulated for the Moroccan case by Lawrence Rosen. 94 This model is particularly
important in studies of religious minorities in Islamic societies, since it allows scholars to shed
the assumption that social bonds are mainly determined by communal structures. 95 Yet just as
theories of forum shopping which are equated with rational self-interest fail to capture the ways
in which individuals actually make legal decisions, an understanding of society which downplays
the role of communal organizations, pressures, and interests fails to account for the full
complexity of individuals’ social ties. Legal consumers’ decisions about which legal forum to
visit when resulted partly from their place in a particular religious community (not to mention
92
Shahar, “Forum Shopping,” 20.
93
Ibid.
94
Lawrence Rosen, Bargaining for Reality: The Construction of Social Relations in a Muslim Community (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1984), esp. Chapter 3; idem, The Justice of Islam, 5-8. See also Henry Munson, “On
the Irrelevance of the Segmentary Lineage Model in the Moroccan Rif,” American Anthropologist 91, no. 2 (1989).
95
See, e.g., Arietta Papaconstantinou, “Between Umma and Dhimma: The Christians of the Middle East under the
Umayyads,” Annales islamologiques 42 (2008): 149-51; Simonsohn, A Common Justice, 8.
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