ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the conceptualization of cultural expertise within the legal systems in the Middle East with the help of three main cases: cannabis cultivation in Lebanon; the normative development of women's rights in Syria; and the recent criminalization of honour killing in the UAE. The Arab Middle East is a region constantly seeking transformative legal changes, and justice brings up multifaceted questions of redistribution of power and claim of rights in the domain of law. Historically, the Arab world is often characterized as highly heterogeneous because it represents a diversity that encompasses a complex system of vertical loyalties and communal differentiations. Cannabis cultivation for medical and industrial purposes has been legalized in Lebanon since April 2020. Syria has long been a country of significant ethnic, religious and linguistic heterogeneity. The study of legal texts in terms of both legislation and court decisions reveals aspects of cultural expertise although they are never overtly acknowledged or characterized as such.
