Institutional Legal Reform in Kuwait after 2011

Abstract

In 2015, Law 12 legislated for the establishment of family courts for the first time in the modern history of Kuwait. The reflections and experiences of stakeholders—judges, lawyers, and administrators—surrounding this law are here contextualized from three perspectives: (1) as an institutional means of strengthening Kuwaiti women’s civil rights in marriage and divorce after women were given political rights in 2005; (2) as part of wide-ranging juridical reforms, including the passing of the Law on the Child in 2015, the expansion of the Kuwait Institute for Judicial and Legal Studies’ powers, and the certification of graduates from the Faculty of Sharīʿa as legal advisors in the state apparatus after 2012; and (3) as an avenue for managing religious pluralism in a state where one-third of the citizenry are Shiʿa Muslim. The sum of these different reforms in the legal sphere are acts of governance that reflect establishing rule-of-law guidelines as a means of centralizing political authority and, by extension, the ruling Āl Ṣubāḥ regime’s grip on power following the 2011 Arab uprisings.