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Date of Award
4-2026
Degree Name
Doctor of Juridical Science (SJD)
Degree Type
Dissertation
Abstract
This dissertation examines legal codification in Saudi Arabia as part of a broader shift toward a more centralized and codified legal order. Under Vision 2030, codification has been presented as a tool to enhance predictability and consistency through structured legislative production. The study asks whether this transformation in lawmaking has reshaped judicial reasoning in practice. It situates recent codification efforts within a longer history of institutional fragmentation, in which legal authority was distributed across courts, committees, and administrative bodies. Since 2016, legislative production has become increasingly centralized, with coordinated drafting processes, formal procedures, and institutional oversight. The dissertation argues that codification under Vision 2030 functions as a mechanism of administrative coordination designed to manage legal production across state institutions. To assess the effects of this shift, the dissertation analyzes forty Commercial Court decisions from the early implementation of the Civil Transactions Law. The findings show that statutory provisions are typically engaged in a limited or confirmatory manner. Judicial reasoning remains primarily anchored in evidentiary logic and established fiqh-based frameworks, with codified rules often introduced after conclusions have already been reached. The study further shows that this pattern is linked to professional formation. Judicial training continues to rely on apprenticeship (mulāzamah), while parallel educational tracks in Sharia and law faculties produce distinct and largely unintegrated modes of legal reasoning. These pathways sustain an epistemic hierarchy in which fiqh-based reasoning remains primary and statutory reasoning secondary. Drawing on Weber’s distinction between lawmaking and adjudication, the dissertation argues that codification has reorganized the structure of legal production without fundamentally transforming the cognitive foundations of adjudication.
Chair and Committee
Prof. Andrea Katz, supervising professor; Prof. Sunita Parikh, examining professor; Prof. James Reeves, examining professor.
Recommended Citation
Al Juhany, Muad, "Codification as Administrative Coordination: Lawmaking, Adjudication, and Legal Formation in Saudi Arabia" (2026). School of Law Dissertations. 109.
https://openscholarship.wustl.edu/law_etds/109