There is a growing scholarship on the relationship between Ottoman law and society based on the rich Islamic court records that are available from the 16th to the early 20th centuries. However, very few studies have addressed changes in the law and the transition from the classical era to the modern legal reforms in the 19th century (Tanzimat Reforms). Fewer studies yet have compared aspects of law and society in the pre-modern and modern periods. Avi Rubin's Ottoman Rule of Law and the Modern Political Trial has a narrow focus and attempts to examine the impact of the new Ottoman criminal code and procedure on a controversial political trial regarding the alleged murder of Sultan Abdulaziz in 1876 during the first constitutional era.

Using the transcript of the Yıldız trial that was printed in a major newspaper five years later and the study of this trial by Turkish historians, as well as Turkish and foreign newspapers and archival material, the author has divided the book into an introduction, four chapters, and a conclusion.

The author first provides background on the emergence of modern Ottoman legal reforms and the rise of rational legal culture and modern judicial procedure. He argues that modern legal reforms were inspired in part by the French legal system (jury trial, codification, court systems). The Ottoman Penal Code of 1858, according to the author, was a combination of traditional and modern legal terminology and practice designed to promote bureaucratic standardization, judicial review, and rule of law.

The new legal system, however, allowed for endless maneuvering by ruling elites during important political trials. The author argues that the Yıldız trial of the Ottoman reformist Midhat Pasha and two other pashas, convicted in the murder of Sultan Abdulaziz, highlights Abdulhamid II's agenda to get rid of his political opponents. He shows how the judges, the prosecutor, and other court officials broke the rules of court procedure to convict Midhat Pasha of a premeditated plan to murder the sultan in the absence of real evidence and by using dubious witnesses. The court yielded to the pressure of Midhat's opponent Cevdet Pasha, the Minister of Justice, and a strong supporter of the sultan, allowing him to unlawfully preside over the court proceedings. The author underlines the bias of the court, allowing the false confessions of the four alleged murderers regarding the complicity of Midhat Pasha.

While it is not clear what led to such a significant clash between Cevdet Pasha and Midhat Pasha, the author does provide brief background on the main political actors and makes reference to the constitutional crisis during this era. The high profile of Midhat Pasha and the support he enjoyed among European diplomats, particularly the British ambassador, increased the public visibility of this show trial, held unusually in the Yıldız palace before an audience of Ottoman and European spectators. The foreign press in Istanbul, London, and the United States covered the trial. But much of the press coverage, with the exception of a few, relied on biased Turkish informants and missed the contradictions and problems in the trial. The European press attributed the alleged murder to cynical Oriental ways and focused on the melodrama of the trial rather than the violations of the law. The pressure of a few European diplomats to treat Midhat Pasha fairly bore no results. The accused were convicted and received a “lighter” sentence of imprisonment in exile rather than execution. Despite British and French objections, the punishment was carried out; Midhat and damad Mahmut Pasha served out their sentences in an inhospitable fortress in Hijaz. Both died under suspicious circumstances, officially as a result of illness.

Rubin explores three important sources of publications regarding this dubious trial: Thirty years later, Ali Haydar Midhat, Midhat's surviving son, later questioned the conviction of his father and demanded a retrial, publishing a book in London in 1903 on the life, reforms, banishment and death of his father. The publication of the trial in the Young Turk Ottoman journal Tanin after the dethronement of Abdulhamid II in 1908 reflected the intention of the Committee of Union and Progress to rehabilitate the legacy of Midhat Pasha. The trial was thoroughly documented by the notable Kemalist era historian Ismail Hakkı Uzunçarsılı, who saw the hands of Abdulhamid in the bloody death of the two men but took no position on the dubious proceedings of the trial.

The execution of high Ottoman bureaucrats was a regular occurrence, without even the benefit of a trial in the pre-modern era. However, for Rubin, this trial is significant because of the modern legal context, the high political profile of the participants, and the highly public spectacle of the proceedings. In many ways, the Ottoman legal culture had not changed and the sultans held absolute control over the lives of their subordinates, ordering their execution with or without a trial.

Ottoman Rule of Law and the Modern Political Trial is not an easy read and requires the reader to have a firm grasp of the background history of the late 19th century and modern legal reforms. The focus of the chapters shifts too often and sometimes the central thread gets lost in theoretical discussions and debates on legal culture. It would have been helpful if the author had provided historical background first, then discussed the nature of legal reforms in the Ottoman Empire and the implementation of the modern criminal code, and then provided the details of the murder of Sultan Abdulaziz, and the subsequent court proceedings. An appendix with the full transcript of the trial in English translation would have enhanced the documentary quality of the book. The book is based on solid research and is theoretically informed, making an important contribution to the late Ottoman legal and political history.