The Call to Codify the Judiciary to Reduce Judicial Errors
Machine translationRead the Arabic original
Question:
This questioner asks and says: What is your opinion, Honorable Shaykh, of those who call for codifying the judiciary on the pretext of reducing judicial errors?
Answer:
The judiciary is based on the Book and the Sunnah; one rules by the Book and the Sunnah and seeks assistance from the words of the scholars and jurists. This is easy, praise be to Allah, as it is organized in chapters, books, and issues, and is detailed. Therefore, there is no need to make it into legal articles, because this restricts Muslim judges to ruling only by these articles, which may be subject to scrutiny because they are independent legal reasoning (ijtihad) and not explicit texts from the Book and the Sunnah. The independent legal reasoning of scholars is sometimes wrong and sometimes right. So the judge refers to the Book and the Sunnah, and there is no harm in him seeking assistance from the statements and opinions of the jurists, taking whichever is closest to the evidence. Yes.
The presenter:
May Allah reward you.
This questioner asks and says: What is your opinion, Honorable Shaykh, of those who call for codifying the judiciary on the pretext of reducing judicial errors?
Answer:
The judiciary is based on the Book and the Sunnah; one rules by the Book and the Sunnah and seeks assistance from the words of the scholars and jurists. This is easy, praise be to Allah, as it is organized in chapters, books, and issues, and is detailed. Therefore, there is no need to make it into legal articles, because this restricts Muslim judges to ruling only by these articles, which may be subject to scrutiny because they are independent legal reasoning (ijtihad) and not explicit texts from the Book and the Sunnah. The independent legal reasoning of scholars is sometimes wrong and sometimes right. So the judge refers to the Book and the Sunnah, and there is no harm in him seeking assistance from the statements and opinions of the jurists, taking whichever is closest to the evidence. Yes.
The presenter:
May Allah reward you.
Source
قناة «العلامة الدكتور صالح الفوزان»، محاضرات في العقيدة والدعوة-46-معالم من منهج أهل السنة والجماعة|صالح الفوزان|العام|كبار العلماء — youtube.com (1:07:43)
The Arabic text is a machine transcription of the audio recording.