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Podcast: New Books in Law
Episode: Egor Lazarev, "State-Building as Lawfare: Custom, Sharia, and State Law in Postwar Chechnya" (Cambridge UP, 2023)
Description: State-Building as Lawfare: Custom, Sharia, and State Law in Postwar Chechnya (Cambridge University Press, 2023) by Dr. Egor Lazarev explores the use of state and non-state legal systems by both politicians and ordinary people in postwar Chechnya. The book addresses two interrelated puzzles: why do local rulers tolerate and even promote non-state legal systems at the expense of state law, and why do some members of repressed ethnic minorities choose to resolve their everyday disputes using state legal systems instead of non-state alternatives?The book documents how the rulers of Chechnya promote and reinvent customary law and Sharia i...