IN THE COURTS OF THE NATIONS - DataSpace - Princeton ...

social class, family, region, etc.), partly from their own individual networks which transcended
those larger social groups (such as business relations, ties to judicial officials, etc.), and partly
from what they perceived to be their financial self-interest.
In using the concept of forum shopping, I pay close attention to the ways in which an
individual’s ability to choose among different legal fora stood in tension with the convergence of
different legal orders. By legal convergence, I mean “the tendency of legal systems, or parts of
legal systems, to evolve in parallel directions.” 96 Forum shopping is based on the premise that
one will get different results in different legal orders—that is, that a sharī‘a court and a beit din
will not rule identically or produce equivalent legal deeds. Yet the different legal orders in
Morocco did not always act in competition with one another. As we will see, Jews sometimes
sought out the services of sharī‘a courts and batei din simultaneously (Chapter Three). Jews
often appealed to the judicial branch of the Makhzan to bolster the authority of Jewish legal
institutions (Chapter Six). Even consular courts adapted to the legal conventions of sharī‘a
courts, often to the point of adopting Islamic legal norms (Chapter Eight). In other words,
Moroccan Jews did not always obtain a different result by turning to a different legal institution;
on the contrary, at times distinct legal orders worked cooperatively to complement or even
bolster one another’s authority. The convergence of legal orders in Morocco did not erase the
advantages of forum shopping, but it did at times limit them; the tension between forum
shopping and legal convergence represents another way in which the legal decisions of
Moroccan Jews were far more complex than a simple pursuit of self interest.
96
Lawrence M. Friedman, “Borders: On the Emerging Sociology of Transnational Law,” Stanford Journal of
International Law 32, no. 1 (1996): 72. See also John Henry Merryman, “On the Convergence (and Divergence) of
the Civil Law and the Common Law,” Stanford Journal of International Law 17, no. 2 (1981).
32