Communities and Law: Politics and Cultures of Legal Identities examines the intersection of communities, cultures, and laws in public life, asking important questions about how nonruling communities confront the law in their efforts to achieve political goals.

The book carefully studies the legal culture of nonruling communities, asking whether individual rights can adequately protect these communities within a democratic society. Taking his evidence from scrupulous primary research into unpublished sources, Gad Barzilai examines the history of violent and nonviolent interactions between the Israeli state and three nonruling communities—Palestinians, feminists, and ultra-Orthodox Jews—ultimately concluding that the liberal principle of individual rights is insufficient to protect minorities in their interactions with the state. Instead, Barzilai, Professor of Political Science at Tel Aviv University and a widely respected authority on conflict and order in the Middle East, offers up a communitarian solution that draws heavily on theories from the fields of politics and law and society.

Barzilai's thoughtful arguments in Communities and Law are a significant contribution to key theoretical discussions about the relationship between communitarianism and national minorities, feminism, and religious fundamentalism. Barzilai's unique approach applies contextual legal and political reasoning based on many years of critical study of law, society, and the state. The result is an important new examination of the continuum from litigation to violence, set in the broader context of contests over the politics of identity.

Gad Barzilai is Professor of International Studies, Law & Political Science at the University of Washington.

On the Web

Gad Barzilai's website