A Decade-Long Journey

Mitra Sharafi wins best article for ‘Indian Constitutionalism, the Rule of Law, and Parsi Legal Culture.’

University of Wisconsin Law School Evjue-Bascom Professor of Law Mitra Sharafi was awarded the 2023 Indian Law Review Best Article Prize for her article “Indian Constitutionalism, the Rule of Law, and Parsi Legal Culture” in January.

The prize is awarded annually to the best article published each year in the journal. Articles are judged on the following criteria: quality of argument, insight and analysis; quality of writing; and originality and contribution to existing literature. Sharafi was the sole winner for 2023.

In the article, Sharafi argues that Parsi legal culture significantly benefited Zoroastrians, an ethnoreligious minority that produced a disproportionate number of leading lawyers and judges in late colonial India. Parsi legal culture also benefited India, building a constitutional foundation that helped the independence movement shift quickly from anti-colonial street protests and Gandhian hunger strikes to running a democracy through the rule of law after independence in 1947.

The article, published online in April 2023, had a “long and twisty path,” according to Sharafi.

The piece began life over a decade ago, originating as the conclusion of her 2014 book on Parsi legal culture, “Law and Identity in Colonial South Asia: Parsi Legal Culture, 1772-1947.” The book went on to win the Law and Society Association’s 2015 Willard Hurst Book Prize.

The chapter (as it was at the time) was removed from the book manuscript in response to feedback from Sharafi’s editors, who felt it would be better suited as a freestanding article.

Sharafi expanded the piece and agreed that it would be part of an edited volume. But after waiting six years with little movement from the volume’s editor, Sharafi pulled it and submitted it instead to the Indian Law Review (ILR), an academic-led, double anonymized peer-reviewed, generalist journal focusing on the laws of the Indian subcontinent. ILR, the leading peer-reviewed law journal in India, reaches an audience of over 33,000 annually, making it Sharafi’s top choice.

“ILR was started in 2017 by a dynamic group of legal scholars of India based at universities around the world,” she explained. “It is the leading peer-reviewed law journal in India and has good readership among academics and practitioners. I appreciated the peer review process — which is not the basis for most U.S. law reviews — because it provides high-quality substantive feedback from experts in the field.”

The review process was fast, professional and overall incredibly helpful, she said.

“This is just how peer review is meant to be,” she said. “I got tough but good reviewers’ comments that definitely made the article better.”

Sharafi’s article has been trending as one of the journal’s most read. With more than 3,500 views, it is currently ranked in the top 10. Through a contribution from her research funds, the article is Open Access and available online.

“No one is above the law.” — Mitra Sharafi

When Sharafi was working on her Parsi legal culture book (which built on her history Ph.D. dissertation at Princeton University), an audience member at one of her talks asked: “Obviously, Parsi legal culture was good for the Parsi community. But what did it do for India?”

This article is her answer.

“It goes to show how productive Q&A feedback can be,” said Sharafi. “A good question could lead the speaker to publish a whole article in reply, even if it’s 15 years later!”

Early in the stages of writing the article, Sharafi was part of a writing group with a few colleagues at UW Law School. She workshopped the article with them.

“We discussed why ‘constitutionalism’ was a term regularly discussed with reference to the U.S., but the ‘rule of law’ was a term generally only used for countries in the developing world,” she recalled.

By the time she put the finishing touches on the article, this was no longer the case.

“We now worry about the rule of law in the U.S., too, and realize that we can’t take it for granted,” she explained.

While working on the article, Sharafi (who is originally Canadian) became a naturalized U.S. citizen. She recalled that one of the questions from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services interviewer was: What is the rule of law? She smiled and almost started telling him all about her article project.

Instead, she settled for a one-line answer: “No one is above the law.”

By Kassandra Tuten