Foundations of UAE law: history, the Constitution, sources, Islamic Sharia, and a mixed system of civil law, common law and special financial zones

Before the federation. For centuries the settled and nomadic people of the Gulf coast lived under tribal custom and Islamic law, applied by **rulers and judges (*qadis*). In the nineteenth century the local rulers signed treaties with Britain, from the General Treaty of 1820 onward, in which they accepted British protection in matters of foreign affairs and defence. The area was known as the Trucial States, and the British influenced its commercial and later its legal development, for example through commercial courts and practices in the main trading ports. Oil, found in the mid-twentieth century**, transformed the economy and state-building.

The federation. When Britain announced its withdrawal, the rulers formed a federation. On 2 December 1971, six emirates (Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Sharjah, Ajman, Umm Al Quwain and Fujairah) joined, and Ras Al Khaimah followed in early 1972. A provisional Constitution was adopted in 1971 and made permanent in 1996, with Abu Dhabi as the capital. The rulers kept wide local powers, so the system is federal in structure: some matters belong to the Federation and some to each emirate (Module 2).

The Constitution. Article 7 says that Islam is the official religion of the Union, that Islamic Sharia is a main source of legislation and that Arabic is the official language. The Constitution lists the powers of the Federation, those shared with the emirates and those left to the emirates, and sets out the main rights and duties of people (Module 4). It creates the Federal Supreme Council of the seven rulers, the President, the Council of Ministers, the Federal National Council and the federal judiciary. Each emirate keeps its own ruler, government and local laws.

Sharia and the codes. Most of the UAE’s law is statutory. The Civil Transactions Law, the Commercial Transactions Law, the Penal Code and the Civil Procedure Law are written codes. Sharia enters in two ways: the legislator has written Sharia principles into the codes (for example on good faith, contract defects, damages, interest in civil loans and personal status), and the courts may refer to Sharia where the code is silent (in the Civil Transactions Law the judge looks first to the text, then to Sharia, then to custom). In family law and inheritance the rules for Muslims are Sharia-based, while for non-Muslim foreigners recent reforms provide a civil system (Module 5). Recent years have seen new codes replace older ones, including a new Civil Code that updates the 1985 law; always check the current text and its date of effect.

A mixed system. The UAE’s onshore (mainland) courts apply civil-law codes in Arabic. The DIFC (set up in 2004) and the ADGM (2015) are financial free zones that have their own common-law rules and courts, in English, modelled on English law: the DIFC enacted its own laws based on common-law principles, while the ADGM applied English common law directly. They are inside the UAE and subject to the Constitution and certain federal laws (such as criminal law), but their civil and commercial disputes are heard by their own courts (Module 3). Other free zones have their own regulators and licensing but generally use the onshore courts. This combination is why a contract clause choosing a court or an arbitration seat matters so much in the UAE (Module 8).