One Light Second

What can you do in a light second? Our 2005 Honda Civic turned 186,282 miles today. (I did not get the moment for a snapshot: I was on the freeway.)  Since 2005, we closed out Laurel's parents' estate, moved to Ann Arbor, completed our degrees, and moved to Austin. 

For seven years (2004-2010), I wrote the "Internet Connections" column of the ANA Numismatist magazine. ANA President William Horton presented me with a special Presidential Award for my work in the hobby.  I also served until 2011 as the webmaster of the Michigan State Numismatic Society. For a few years (2004-2007), I was the magazine editor, also. I was appointed to the Board once and elected to the Board once.

My associate's and bachelor's degrees are in criminology because when work as a technical writer got hard to find, I picked up a job as a security guard in 2002. When we moved to Ann Arbor, I was hired by campus safety at Washtenaw Community College and served there for a year (August 2005 - September 2006). I then worked for Securitas (2006-2007) and Allied Barton (2007-2008). That was actually the same job: when the client changed contractors, we just changed uniforms.

The Washtenaw County Commission appointed me to the city-county community corrections advisory board, 2005-2008. I joined Infragard and ASIS: the American Society for Industrial Security.  Not finding work as a security supervisor, I returned to graduate school and earned a master's in social science. I chose that for the opportunity to plan my electives. I concentrated on transnational white collar crime.

Moving to Austin in 2011, I was hired by Securitas. I worked several of the downtown high rises.  I like being a business serving businesses.

I also found work as a technical writer. Project clients have included Dell, the Texas Department of Information Resources, the Texas Department of Public Safety, the Texas Military Department, and the Texas Education Agency. I am currently with Prologic Technology Systems, whose TEAMS software serves independent school districts and charter schools.

In November 2014, I joined the Texas State Guard. As a petty officer third class in the maritime regiment, I work in Future Operations as a trainer and technical writer for WebEOC, the virtual emergency operations center. I also completed a certification with CERT, the city's Community Emergency Response Team.

Also in November 2014, my wife and daughter bought me a telescope. I joined the Austin Astronomical Society and earned a certificate in telescope operations for their Eagle Eye Observatory outside of Austin.

On the downside, since 2005, we lost four cats. BA ("Badass Little Cat") was struck by a car in Kingsley, Michigan. Madonna died of old age in Ann Arbor while we were out of town. The pet sitter claimed not to have seen her, but the evidence at the scene was clear: she died in my office.  Isis had been my brother's cat. We had her only for a couple of years.  She died here of natural causes at about ten. Losing Goofy was the hardest. He had been with us the longest, 19 years.

I started this blog on January 2, 2011. Over 136,000 visitors have read the 391 posts. The most popular article (1957 views) has been "What (if Anything) Did Dorothy Learn?" You never know what other people will find interesting.

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A Culture of Reality, Reason, and Freedom

Since Karl Marx, government was always taken as a consequence of an oppressive economy.  The arguments of the Age of Reason – Locke derived from Aristotle – that government evolved in a “state of nature” to protect rights was ignored.  However, a recent JSTOR search on “anarcho-capitalism” returned 31 useful citations.  Anarcho-capitalism challenged social conservatives to find individualist, market-based justifications for government – not just in the past but for the present future as the global economy has corporations many times larger than most of the world’s 180+ nation-states.

The “state of nature” hangs over us as a constant threat. Even before nuclear weapons, H. G. Wells’ Things to Come showed a world reduced by war to a primitive struggle for survival.  To what extent is government a protection against barbarism or the entry gate to it? 

Minarchists claim that a constitutionally-limited government is the best protection for our rights, and therefore our best option for a peaceful world.  Free market anarchists disagree with that.  Minarchists reply that eventually, the largest private defense agency inevitably will become the new government.  Without a historical record, the theoretical arguments could not be resolved.

In fact, empirical evidence abounds.  The essential problem – as Ayn Rand cogently asserted – is that academic philosophers are mired in Kantian epistemology: they distrust their senses and insist on “consistent” arguments which are not even that because they are detached from reality.  Robert Nozick’s Anarchy, State, and Utopia is a perfect example. 

Nozick tried to show that in a “state of nature” the largest private defense agency will become first an ultra-minimal government and then a minimal (rights-protecting) government.  Ultimately, he failed because he did not explain the evidence.  In his time, Pinkerton, Burns, and a hundred other private guard companies in America did not fire on each other. However, in most of the world warring groups did and still do vie to be the monopoly provider of force in a given geography – and the outcome was and is not a general protection unalienable natural rights.  And in America, then as now, gang warfare existed with no sign of extinction by the legal monopoly of physical force in retaliation.

The deeper problem avoided by both Nozick and his foil, Murray N. Rothbard, is that utopians attempt to prescribe for everyone else how we should, could, or would live in a perfect world, which these freedom-loving social planners devise for the rest of us.

Individualism is not just an abstract political notion.  People vary; and many of them are comfortable within a collective.  Of course, many of us are happier hearing that different drummer. 

If you decided that it would be more efficient for your employer to have the shipping dock on the other side of the building, what would you do?  You could convince the top management with a cost-benefit presentation and they could just order it done. You could bribe everyone to do it your way, offering tangible selfish rewards.  You could take their children hostage.  More likely, the managers would form a committee of stakeholders because people tend to go along with decisions that they helped to make.  The others would adapt, grouse and complain, or leave.

The structure of a society does matter.  An open society is more prosperous than a controlled society.  But an open society includes people who are controlled and controlling.  (Sometimes, they claim to be individualists.)  The fundamental determinants of a culture are complex and deeply rooted.  An old story from a previous generation of university fellows tells of the graduate school dining room where three sociologists sat down with a couple of biologists.  After introductions and amiable chatter, the biologists excused themselves. “We have to start some cultures,” one said.  The sociologists were surprised, and laughed at the pun.  Then they considered: How do you start a culture?

PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS

The Sociology of Freedom

The Science of Liberty

Freedom in an Unfree World

Open Secrets

Alongside Night to run in Austin; Author to Appear

J. Neil Schulman will be in Austin for the screening of his film, Alongside Night on June 18.  We will meet him for dinner at the Dog & Duck (17th & Guadalupe) the next evening, Thursday, June 19, from 5:00 PM to 7:00.  After dinner we will go to Brave New Books (1904 Guadalupe, just north of MLK) for autographs.

 With a cameo by Ron Paul, Alongside Night is the story of the final economic collapse of the United States. We see it through the eyes of 16-year-old Elliot Vreeland.  Elliott searches for his father, a Nobel laureate economist who was targeted for arrest because he consulted with the Europeans to create a gold-based currency that effectively destroyed all confidence in the U.S. dollar.  Inflation is rampant.  The federal government has issued emergency scrip; and vending machine tokens circulate as a convenience.  As shortages and rationing spread, thousands of activists and protestors are rounded up.  Hundreds are held in a secret prison called “Utopia” – Nowhere.

Alongside Night

Wednesday, June 18 7:30PM - 9:25PM

in Austin, TX at

AMC-14 Barton Creek Square Mall

Tickets $11.00 at

http://www.tugg.com/events/9089

Starring Kevin Sorbo (Hercules: The Legendary Journeys), Mara Marini (Recreation), Susan Smythe (Lady Magdalene), Jake Busey (Contact and Starship Troopers), Star Trek: Voyager's Tim Russ and Garrett Wang as well as up-and-coming actors Christian Kramme, Reid Cox, Kyle Leatherberry, Rebekah Kennedy, Charlie Morgan Patton, and Eric Colton. Cameo appearances by Dr. Ron Paul, David D. Friedman, and Adam Kokesh.

Kevin Sorbo as Dr. Martin Vreeland,
Nobel Laureate economist

Official Trailer

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2HQsVgxMTnc

Fan Trailer

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o6kBbGHq6Bk

Internet Movie Database

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1667061/

Longer Official Trailer

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTZ8vn45Cds

Find us on Facebook: 
Alongside Night in Austin here

Author's websites:

http://www.alongsidenight.net/

http://www.alongsidenightmovie.com/

Graphic novel from Pulpless.com still available via Amazon.

Kindle edition of graphic novel available via Amazon

Jake Busey plays the President of the United States

The Wikipedia entry:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alongside_Night

PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS

Alongside Night Released
Murray Rothbard: Fraud or Faker?

Numismatics Informs Economics

Another Example of Unlimited Constitutional Government

Republican Rebels

Inspecting the Objectivist Theory of Government

American libertarians generally believe that the only proper functions of government are an army to protect the nation from invasion, police forces to protect citizens from aggression, and courts of law to settle disputes.  That comes directly from Ayn Rand’s essay, “The Nature of Government” published originally in The Objectivist Newsletter (Vol. 2, No. 12, December 1963) and reprinted in The Virtue of Selfishness and Capitalism: the Unknown Ideal.  Beyond that, little work has been done.  When asked in public forums about gun control and capital punishment, Ayn Rand specifically demurred. She had no answers and left it to the future of legal scholarship and jurisprudence.

Post Modernist Antithesis
of Objectivism

 The Objectivist theory of government rests on philosophical foundations in ethics, morality, epistemology, and metaphysics.  (Rand conflated ethics and morality. We do so commonly, but they are different.  Morality is personal. Ethics are social.)  Any assertions about what is proper or improper must be consistent with the rational-empiricism of a self-interested individual, whom Rand called man qua man.

Your rights can only be violated by volitional actors, by other people.  If you are injured by a horse, the animal did not violate your rights. The police can only act in retaliation to a violation of rights.  So, if the police see a pack of coyotes surrounding a child, are they morally obligated to act?  (I believe that they are. Others disagree.) If the police know from emergency systems that a tornado is approaching, and if they see picnickers on the public square, are they morally obligated to warn people of the danger?  (I must insist that they do. Others claim laissez faire/laissez passer.) If you have an absolute right to self-determination, and you threaten suicide by jumping from a tall building, are the police obligated to intervene? 

According Ayn Rand, a truly capitalist society depends on government. Government holds a geographic monopoly on the use of retaliatory force.  A government also enforces a single body of law within that geography.  Rand specifically denounced Murray Rothbard’s theory of “anarcho-capitalism” touted later by Linda and Morris Tannehill in The Market for Liberty (1971), and Jarret Wollstein in Society without Coercion (1969) among others.

One of 300,000 Securitas
employees in 52 countries.

We had governments before we had police forces.  The word “police” appears nowhere in the U.S. Constitution. The first police force was the London Metropolitan formed by Sir Robert Peel in 1829.  American cities followed. Today Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Chicago argue about who had the first by whatever definitions that the traditional "night watch" or "fire watch" evolved to copy the London "bobbies."  It was only after the Civil War that the policeman in a blue uniform became an integral part of large cities.  It is also true that the U.S. Marshals were created in the first session of the first Congress. The Judiciary Act of September 24, 1789, established one marshal for each federal district court. (Image at the Library of Congress here.)  The distinction may make a difference.

Today, we have private companies providing police services, armies, adjudication, negotiation, and arbitration, and doing so in competition and cooperation with each other and in competition and cooperation with traditional nation-state governments. These market entities create their own laws, such as the Uniform Commercial Code.  Businesses and individuals also choose among governments, shopping for laws. Read your mortgage, the bank loan for your car, the terms of your credit cards. It is how a Japanese company, buys parts made in Ireland, by a company headquartered in Germany for installation in cars made in Ohio, to be sold by a dealer in Indiana to a customer from Kentucky. And if pirates in the South China Sea hijack the cargo, the owners will call on a private company to retrieve their property.

In 1972, Edwin Newman interviewed Ayn Rand for his show “Speaking Freely” on NBC-TV. Among other statements, Ayn Rand said: “But on the matter of protecting people from physical danger, if certain conditions of employment, let us say, are unsafe and it can be proved that there is a physical risk – I don’t say that we have to wait until somebody dies – then the employer who is creating this risk can be sued, and can be severely punished financially. In other words, there can be a law protecting a man from physical injury by another man. In this case, the employer who puts men into conditions of danger – not accidentally, but intentionally or carelessly – can be penalized because he is infringing the right of his workers not to be injured physically.”  (That and other transcripts are collected in the anthology Objectively Speaking: Ayn Rand Interviewed, edited by Marlene Podritske and Peter Schwartz; Lexington Books, 2009.)

That can bring back the question of the person who threatens suicide. There are many ways to take your own life and rational reasons for doing so; and it is better to face the end under your own control.  But when someone goes to a roof to commit suicide, they are being publicly dramatic. By definition, a person in an irrational state is not capable of making a rational choice.  Anyone in that circumstance has the same legal status as a child.  They get protection they have not asked for.

Discussing these and related problems with other Objectivists I have been accused of being an anarchist, a nanny state progressive, and a totalitarian.  I take that to mean (1) these questions cut to the core of the philosophy; and (2) the problems are not easily resolved; and (3) no one else has a consistent development. 

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Unlimited Constitutional Government

Another Example of Unlimited Constitutional Government

Redshirts: Expendable in Fiction and Fact

As a security guard, I found Redshirts by John Scalzi (Tom Doherty Association, 2012), at once intriguing, humorous, insightful, and disappointing.  Marketed in book format, the story is a novella typeset with extra leading, and to which is appended another story in another format.  The thesis is obvious from the title.  If you know the Star Trek universe, then you have seen the expendable, disposable security force on the away teams. The redshirts die to tell the audience that the main characters are in danger. 

In fact, the trope is known in other genres.  In the Fox-TV series 24, the government’s elite “Counter-Terrorism Unit” is protected by unarmed security guards who take the first salvo every time that the CTU is attacked.  Perhaps the first to be formally dubbed “expendable” in popular media were the American PT boat crews serving in the Philippines when Japan attacked the USA to enter World War II.  (William Lindsay White’s novel, They Were Expendable, archived on Google Books here and  Life magazine story archived on Google Books here.)  Of course the stories of Samson, the 300 Spartans, and the Alamo speak to the same tradition.

Scalzi’s work is at once a parody and a tribute.  Just as Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey is a Gothic novel about a girl deluded by Gothic novels, so, too, does Redshirts incorporate all the important elements of classic Star Trek.  The characters who cannot die are the Captain, the Science Officer, the Engineer, the Astrogator, and the Medical Officer.  Also, characters who have backstories are more durable.  These are our viewpoint hero, Ensign Andrew Dahl, and the new friends he makes at the spaceport bar: Maia Duvall (who earned her officer’s commission coming up from the ranks of the infantry), Jimmy Hanson (James Albert Henson IV heir to the galaxy’s greatest fortune but a real regular guy), Finn (a drug dealer) and Hester (his hapless accomplice).  Possessing a backstory is critical to surviving; otherwise the writers will kill you off sooner.

Ensign Andrew Dahl eventually discovers that their universe is affected and ultimately controlled by the mediocre writers of a TV show from 2010 thinly based on Star Trek from 1967.  The solution is to slingshot around a blackhole, achieve time travel, get to 2012, and cancel the show so they can enjoy and finish out normal lives in their own universe, instead of dying in grisly encounters with killer robots, hostile aliens, exobiologic plagues, and other dramatic effects.  In fact, the need for such drama is one clue.

“The Narrative” is the commanding presence that makes people do things they never would (rushing in to mortal danger) and lets them know things they previously did not (piloting a shuttle).  The Narrative is why the Captain is given to rhetorical soliloquy, followed by silence… so the commercial can interrupt the action.  The Narrative is why the Captain never engages countermeasures until after the first enemy salvo hits decks 6 through 12, and why only three out of four incoming missiles are neutralized.  

Interestingly, in the Star Trek: Original Series Omnibus (IDW Publishing, 2010), in the “Fourth Year” story Spock tells Kirk: “In the time that I have served as your first officer, an indigenous population has attacked the Enterprise 33 times.  Of those attacks, 84% occurred after you failed to make scheduled check-ins from the surface.”  Such regularities are difficult to miss, especially when it is your friends being ground up by crazed robots. 

To explain the Redshirts, I showed my wife the ST:OS season two episode “The Apple” in which four redshirts met plants that spewed poisonous darts, rocks that exploded, random lightning, and angry villagers. 

For more on Redshirts, see the Star Trek fan site Memory Alpha here.

Real life redshirts include the private contractors who supplemented US military forces in Iraq during the Second Gulf War.  That story is harder to tell because nothing about it is amusing.

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Private Security in the 21st Century
Shifting the Paradigm of Private Security
Locksporting
Active Defense and Passive Aggression, Part 1.
Active Defense and Passive Aggression, Part 2.

Shifting the Paradigm of Private Security

 Private security is fundamentally a business service. If the sign says “No Smoking” I do not care what you are smoking, just, please take it over there. This is different from public policing. Still, the intersecting set of guardian duties continues to drag into private security a large army of “cop wannabes” – those who never could be police officers because they cannot make the metrics; and those who having been police officers do not want to retire from work. Both groups are problematic. The permanent solution is to build a rational model based on empirical evidence that brings private security completely into the markets of business services and out of the public arena.

 Jane Jacobs delineated two modes of human action in Systems of Survival: A Dialogue on the Moral Foundations of Commerce and Politics (Random House, 1992). The commercial mode of the merchant and trader shares some intentions of the political mode of the guardian and warrior. Honesty and honor are easy analogues, as are the sanctity of contract and the duty of loyalty. Other standards are diametrically opposed. Merchants are open to strangers; guardians are closed. Traders seek voluntary agreements; warriors use force.

According to Jacobs, the political mode is common to the police and army, to charities, as well as to the Mafia, and socialist political systems. Alternately, scientists and farmers share the moral code of the merchant. When the modes cross or mix, then corruption results, as when police officers accept bribes or when businesses get laws passed for themselves.

In her book, Jacobs developed the two lists from their inherent hierarchies. To the trader collaboration with strangers is most important. For the guardian, loyalty is the primary virtue. The list can be re-arranged by similes and opposites. Some have no direct corollaries.

Consider the array of comparative virtues:

From Systems of Survival: by Jane Jacobs.

What could be changed in private security to make it more entrepreneurial and less political without risking the fundamental responsibility for the safety and security of our clients and their property? 

As businesses whose profits come from the difference between the cost of production and the market price of our services, the commercial virtues of thrift, efficiency, and productive investment speak against the rich use of leisure, distribution of largess, and ostentatious displays.

Vengeance is not appropriate to private guard companies. Although warriors and guardians engage in it, the ultimate value is putative, at best. Vengeance is not justice; it is not even retribution. It certainly has no place in the business world where competitors become partners.

Jacobs stressed the innovative and inventive nature of enterprise. The guardian virtues of obedience, hierarchy, and tradition are less salient in business. A certain level of expected obedience defines some of the relationship between the CEO and the Board, as between the line worker and the manager. But those are defined by contract. In warrior groups, any implied “contract” is secondary to the need for obedience. Military units are sacrificed and cowardice is punished. Troops are expected to fight without pay and even without food.

Private Security in the 21st Century

In J. Neil Schulman’s libertarian utopia Alongside Night, our hero, the son of a free market Nobel laureate economist, is on the run when he falls in love with the daughter of the director of the FBI.  He discovers an underground, both literal and figurative, and as the stormtroopers attack, the Boy and the Girl are separated.  He needs to find her, but the private security guards are directing people to safety.  He wants to argue, but they will have none of that. Rather than ordering him to obey the klaxon call to evacuate – which is what he expects – the guard asks him to stand aside for a moment until they can help him find his girlfriend. So it is with private security: we are not cops… at least, not ideally. 

Today, supervisors in private security generally come from the world of public policing.  They follow the Guardian ethos.  However, as security services are increasingly for-profit enterprises, the future of market-driven security will evolve along a different line. 

In Systems of Survival, (see here on this blog) Jane Jacobs outlined two moral syndromes: the Guardian, and the Trader.  They are often different expressions of the same virtues, but, also, often contrary in motives or opposite in goals.  The future of private security lies with eliminating as many of the "power" modes as possible and replacing them with "market" modes.

It is true that Guardians should not trade favors.  That way lies corruption.  However, many of the elements of the warrior path can be replaced with the merchant's course – and to the benefit and profit of the security provider, as well as to their clients and to their clients' communities of customers, who in retail are known as the ultimate consumers.  

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Shifting the Paradigm of Private Security
Employee Theft
Locksporting
Redshirts

AVAILABLE ON SLIDESHARE:
Physical Security for Data Centers

A MAN'S HOME IS HIS MARKET

We see the "castle" as a paradigm, not just because we are at war with our neighbors - Hobbes' war of all against all being the reason for government. For us, the home is primary protection against the elements. In the words of William Pitt:"The poorest man may in his cottage bid defiance to all the forces of the crown. It may be frail - its roof may shake - the wind may blow through it - the storm may enter - the rain may enter - but the King of England cannot enter." After all, the way to take a castle is to "storm" it. In the 20th century military assault was by "stormtroopers." In our time, Iraq was conquered by "Desert Storm."  In a society of open courtyards, verandas (a Hindi word, likely borrowed from Portuguese), decks, roofs with hanging gardens, patios, arcades and colonades, concepts of safety, security, and ultimately, property rights, must have other paradigms.

In Nelly Hanna's biography of Isma'il Abu Taqiyya, Making Big Money in 1600 (American University of Cairo Press, 1998) she tells of how he expanded his home to meet the needs of his large and successful family. Established as perhaps the leading merchant of Cairo c. 1000 AH (c.1600 AD), certainly as one of its prominent men of commerce, he already had built a warehouse - wikala - that in fact included living quarters for travelers as well as shops and storage. To do that, they could not use "eminent domain": they had to buy each parcel, maybe 100 feet on a side for a small plot. It took years, but it respected property rights. He still needed to accommodate his wives, concubines, servants, slaves, and visiting clients. To expand his home, he bought the house next door and knocked out a wall. This enlarged his courtyard, baths, and stables, as well as yielding more living space.

The climate of Egypt - in contrast to that of northern Europe - allowed and demanded open spaces, open windows, doors, and arches. Entrance to the inner rooms was guarded, certainly, but the margin between public and private spaces was gradual and contextual. Homes had gates, certainly. But a merchant needs to meet people. And they need access to him.

Contrary to the custom elsewhere - and contradicting our own easy assumptions - there was no harem, separate quarters for women. Women and their children were arrayed in their own spaces based on social status. A concubine who had borne a child rated more honor than a wife who had not. Women also brought their wealth and status with them into a marriage. His third wife, having no children, assured her own income by taking control of the "trust" (waqf) established by her brothers. They relied on her to be a better manager and apparently she did not disappoint them. Meanwhile, she was the wife of Isma'il Abu Taqiyya until his death.

After his death, his family split up, children inheriting their shares. Boys got twice the girls' share, but each child got something. (Compare primogeniture in Europe.) Wives did not inherit directly. His one wife with children - themselves now married - brought her family together in one of the inherited smaller homes, acquired the place next door, and knocked out a wall.By the time Ismail Abu Taqiyya was at his height of wealth (and health), his social space included the entire street of his home. He and a longtime friend had built their homes (and their wikalas) on the same street.

They acquired the neighboring properties piecemeal over time - respecting property rights, not only of the owners, but also satisfying the needs of those other waqf "trusts" which held property independent of the nominal owners.

This was not unique to them. With the government of the Mamluks fallen to the Ottoman Pashas who had not been able to exert control and who were themselves appointed for limited terms of office, the merchants of Cairo built and rebuilt large parts of it.

The piazza is a public space, but among urban Americans in the 19th century, it came to be a somewhat pretentious word for the front porch. For Americans, the front porch became the margin between the public street and the privacy of the interior home. Adults could sit and rock while children played games. Friends and neighbors could stroll pass and bid hello and good day. An industry arose to create special furniture for this special space. (As a measure of fire safety, the City of Ann Arbor forbids couches and other interior furniture from the porch. But in any case, it is unseemly: outdoor furniture is appropriate.) Europeans assigned to work in Detroit like Ann Arbor because our restaurants extend to the street, using the sidewalks for table spaces. (This fact was brought to my attention by engineers from an Israeli firm doing business here.) The margins between public and private spaces are blurred. It would be difficult to discuss anything illegal or immoral in such a context. Business and social life become transparent when conducted on the street. In such a context, you grant privacy by minding your own business.

Therefore, rather than the castle which holds against the storm, a commercial society of productive traders, offering values in voluntary exchange, is better served by a theoretical model or exemplar or pattern of open intercourse. That brings up promiscuity, the easy mixing of people, too easy for the Puritans for whom safety from the elements and their neighbors comes from being shut and shuttered.

In an open society, police without a warrant would be unwelcome in a home because they have no business there.

That openness is also reflected in the legal institutions of the time and place. There, four different schools of law - Hanafi, Maliki, Shafi'i, Hanbali - operated their own courts. In each, four different judges (qadi) heard cases. You could pick your judge. In addition, disputes among co-ethnics or co-religionists were expected to be handled within that community. Finally, of course, the Sultan and his Pasha could dispense state justice. Usually by proxy, as elsewhere and elsewhen, the ruler was nominally available to his people by direct appeal.

So, for a merchant such as Abu Taqiyya, different kinds of contracts were better (for him) registered with certain courts.

From our point of view today, it seems odd to learn that under shari'a law as practiced by the competing courts of Cairo circa 1000 AH is women sued - and were sued - on their own account. There is even a case of a Bosnian slave woman being sued. Women inherited their own money, managed their own estates. As now - as always - a woman with a forceful and compelling personality (usually from a wealthy family) could get some interesting clauses in her marriage contracts. By custom, a man is supposed to treat all of his wives equally. There is no way to enforce that -- usually. One woman had it written in and specified how many nights he was allowed to spend with the other wives, etc. As a clause in a marriage contract, it was enforceable. And if she left, she took her property with her. Contrast that with England or France of 1600 AD.

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