- Punsara Amarasinghe reviews Hassan Khalileh’s book Islamic Law of the Sea: Freedom of Navigation and Passage Rights in Islamic Thought in the latest issue of Ilahiyat Studies journal (Ilahiyat Studies: A Journal on Islamic and Religious Studies 11, no.1 (2020)).
- In “Reforming Criminal Justice in the Ottoman Empire: Police, Courts and Prisons in Rusçuk, 1839-1864” (American Journal of Legal History 60, no. 2 (2020)), Mehmet Celik explores the experimentation phase of the Ottoman Tanzimat reforms on the criminal justice system in the city of Rusçuk by focusing on its police, courts, and prisons from 1839-1864.He argues that the Ottoman government established new police forces and modernised prisons in the city in 1846, and that it bestowed extensive judicial authority over criminal cases on the meclis-i kebi, a secular administrative council in the provinces. His study also analyzes the types and frequency of crimes and the penalties they received.