Islamic rule of law constrained rulers, capital, and amendment equally

Evidence

In the case study discussed in chapter 2, Islam’s rule of law was shown to have stood above executive, judicial, and legislating will, and no one could change the law at will or through an amendment. … The overall dictates of the law ruled over sultans as much as over any common person or anyone in between. The law of the land could not be suspended, and no exceptions were possible. … And since that system, as I have shown through a discussion of the corporation, did not allow capitalism to break loose from a preset ethical benchmark, money and its derivative power could not affect the rule of law in any systemic or structural way. — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 408

Categorization

• XREF: Contrasts sharply with the English/Spanish constitutional arrangements in The Defeat of the Spanish Armada, where privilege and Crown power bent the law.
• SEED: Angles for a piece on how a legal system that cannot be suspended or amended resists both executive overreach and capture by capital — a concrete institutional contrast to constitutional amendment culture.