June 05, 2023Annual Writing Prize
Fady Khoury awarded Harvard Law School's 2023 Writing Prize of the Program on Law and Society in the Muslim World
The recipient of this year’s Harvard Law School 2023 Writing Prize of the Program on Law and Society in the Muslim World is SJD candidate Fady Khoury for his paper “Constitutional Design in Divided Societies: Historical Formations, Power-Sharing and Courts – The Case of Lebanon.”
The paper explores the case of Lebanon as a divided society and the constitutional responses it adopted to address intercommunal conflicts and disagreements. It traces key historical events, dating back to early nineteenth-century Mount Lebanon, in which ethno-religious identities emerged as the bases for community formation.
Most importantly, Khoury says, the paper focuses on the content of intercommunal conflict, its constitutional nature and the institutional design choices adopted to address it. The corporate consociational power-sharing system that was eventually established in Ottoman Mount Lebanon in 1861/1864 provided a blueprint for future constitutional design choices still observed in present-day Lebanon, in what, he argues, demonstrates the path-dependent development of Lebanon’s constitutional order.
Salma Waheedi, Associate Director of the Program, said that Khoury’s writing stood out as a “particularly strong and original contribution to the field that is worthy of recognition”.