When the internet went dark in Iran, AmirAli Maleki kept writing. His phone’s notes app became a quiet act of defiance—whenever a conversation, an image, or a moment of fear or solidarity struck him, he recorded it before it vanished.
Maleki, a scholar of law and philosophy and JURIST’s Iran correspondent, focuses on the impact of international law and the theories that undergird it on the lives of those around him. In 2026, he received the David M. Crane Rule of Law Award, recognizing journalists who uphold legal scrutiny under extreme pressure. The award honors David M. Crane, the founding chief prosecutor of the Special Court for Sierra Leone.
The intellectual as witness
Maleki does not consider himself an intellectual by profession. He describes the role as something anyone can assume—“a contingent role that anyone can inhabit at certain moments.” For him, the duty involves remembrance. “To remember is not merely an act of preserving the past; it is a form of resistance,” he said. “It insists that experiences matter and deserve to be articulated.”
During internet blackouts, his phone served as his workspace. He wrote fragments of ideas, observations, and contradictions, saving them before they could disappear. “I did so because I believe in the power of remembrance,” he said.
The scholar rejects the idea that intellectual work belongs only to academics. In Iran, where political life permeates daily existence, ordinary people constantly observe, interpret, and remember. “Intellectual work is not confined to universities; it is part of daily life,” he said.
Political stuttering and the limits of language
One of Maleki’s key concepts is “political stuttering,” inspired by Hans-Georg Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics. Gadamer argued that human understanding is inherently incomplete—there’s always a gap between thought and expression. “Meaning remains unfinished, and it is precisely this incompleteness that makes dialogue possible,” Maleki said.
The idea isn’t weakness. It’s the moment when political language fails to describe reality. A healthy political system recognizes this limitation and remains open to revision. An unhealthy one treats its language as absolute.
In Iran, where dialogue is often restricted, Maleki sees this stuttering as both a crisis and a defense of intellectual humility. “Every political language is incomplete, every political order is historically contingent,” he said. “Societies must preserve spaces where disagreement, revision, and learning remain possible.”
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Law as living memory
Maleki’s experience in Iran has reshaped his view of international law. He rejects the idea of a gap between theory and reality. “Reality never fits completely within theory, and theory never fully captures reality,” he said. “The task of legal thought is not to produce a final correspondence but to continuously extend itself toward a reality that always remains a few steps ahead.”
He describes law as “genetic”—not biologically, but culturally. Legal norms are inherited, passed down through language, memory, and lived experience. “They do not simply disappear when institutions change or constitutions are rewritten,” he said. “They remain sedimented within a society’s legal memory.”
This led him to the concept of “floating norms”—norms that never fully vanish but resurface when historical circumstances demand them. “The superior norm is not merely a logical presupposition,” he said. “It is a historical inheritance.”
His work also bridges Islamic philosophy and international law. He draws on Al-Farabi’s idea of the Madinah al-Jama’iyyah—the communal city—as a way to rethink political and legal temporality. “Political life is fundamentally historical and generational,” he said. “A community is not defined only by its present institutions, but by the continuity of interpretation across time.”
This perspective challenges the dominance of Western legal frameworks. “International law needs a genuine pluralization of voices and intellectual horizons,” he said. “The future of the field depends on its ability to hear new languages of critique, like those emerging from disenfranchisement debates in other regions.”
The rule of law as endurance
Receiving the David M. Crane Rule of Law Award reinforced Maleki’s belief that legal thought persists even under repression. “The rule of law is not only a legal doctrine, but the continuity of legal meaning across interruption,” he said. “It is the idea that law remains a language of responsibility, justification, and critique even under conditions of fragility.”
For him, the rule of law is inseparable from the persistence of legal language. “Law exists not only as structure, but as a form of linguistic practice that must constantly be performed, questioned, and renewed,” he said. “It carries within itself a historical memory—a sedimentation of past conflicts, interpretations, and injustices.”
The task of the jurist is not only to apply law, but also to play with its language. “To deconstruct, reconstruct, and reactivate it when necessary,” he said. “Legal language is not merely regulatory; it is also creative and critical.”
Football as a site of meaning
Maleki’s interest in football extends beyond the sport. He sees it as a philosophical event—a moment where collective emotions, national narratives, and historical memories crystallize. “A football match is not only a competition; it is also a space where questions of value, belonging, conflict, and interpretation become visible,” he said.
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He critiques contemporary international law for becoming detached from lived experience. “At its worst, it becomes a kind of procedural emptiness—a formal system that circulates concepts without grounding them in reality,” he said. Football, for him, is a reminder that interpretation happens in time, within events, and through embodied participation.
“We do not stand outside the game of life in order to analyze it,” he said. “We are already inside it, already moved by it, already implicated in its unfolding logic.”
A new generation of Iranian scholars
Maleki wants international audiences to understand that young Iranian scholars are active participants in global debates. “They are not merely translating their intellectual lives into pre-existing frameworks,” he said. “International legal discourse must also open itself to being transformed by these voices.”
The discipline cannot remain confined to a limited set of conceptual traditions while claiming universality. “It needs a genuine pluralization of voices and intellectual horizons,” he said. This moment is historically significant. Digital communication has created a transnational space where Iranian scholars can intervene directly in global conversations.
“I consider myself part of a generation that is beginning to inhabit this space more directly,” Maleki said. “A generation of Iranian scholars who produce theory meant to circulate internationally from the start.”
His next project explores a “postmodern natural law”—not a return to classical doctrines, but a rethinking of legal normativity in a globally interconnected world. “Law continuously emerges from within the dynamic structure of everyday existence,” he said. “It is shaped by how people actually live, communicate, and interpret their own conditions.”
He hopes to restore philosophy of law as a serious, expansive field. “Legal theory has often been sidelined in favor of more technical or doctrinal approaches,” he said. “My intention is to contribute to restoring it as a globally engaged field of inquiry.”
“Legal philosophy, for me, is not a closed domain of inquiry; it is an open, ongoing, and collective project,” he said. “I hope to contribute to its expansion—both in Iran and in the broader world of international legal scholarship.”
