Conceptualisations of Legal Otherness in Asylum Evidentiary Practices: From Formal to Anthropological Interpretations of Unconventional Legal Authorities
Abstract
This article presents an analytical study of several asylum cases on which Czech courts issued rulings between 2007 and 2022. It focuses on ex posing the ways in which asylum authorities/courts conceptually treat legal otherness on the basis of incomplete information in the practical context of asylum proceedings.
It demonstrates how the judgments of Czech asylum courts deal with the legal differences of countries of origin in evidentiary in terpretations of documents, such as transcripts of asylum interviews or coun try-of-origin information (COI), by reconstructing the conceptual frameworks in which the alterity of the origin countries' state legal systems and custom ary law is embedded. It identifies particular evidentiary concepts that do not easily fit into the standard ontology of formal asylum law.
In particular, Czech court rulings tend to conceptually frame unconventional le gal authorities (like elders, traditional councils) as cultural entities, non-state actors, or private persons, which paradoxically disqualifies them from the on tological possibility of posing (or preventing) a threat to refugees by operat ing an (in)effective legal system. The article discusses the possibility of applying an alternative of legal-anthropological conceptualisation of un conventional legal authorities, focusing specifically on Afghanistan, Jordan, and Yemen.