Forty years ago, the legal system of Afghanistan was based mostly on religious tradition and regional customs. The Afghan religious scholars and religious men who pursued Islamic studies did so in Afghanistan, India (including present Pakistan), Bukhara, Tashkand, and Samarkand (some of the present Russian republics). With this background they then held the positions of kadi (judge) and mufti (assistant-judge) in the Afghan government. Some of these men also taught Islamic studies informally and acted as religious leaders. The formal structure for legal decisions was the court consisting of the kadis and muftis. In addition to this formal system, the leaders of the tribes and sages were informally the source of decision for many cases. In these cases the people respected their decisions and opinions which were based on regional traditions. The modernization of the legal system of Afghanistan began after the Constitution of 1930 was adopted. Although this Constitution was based on religious tradition, it was modern in that it recommended that specific laws should be written within the framework provided. During the years that followed, new laws were written dealing with the administration of the government as well as with criminal, commercial, and civil cases. Even though the principles of law were taken from religious and national tradition, the Western influence can be seen in the new theories of administrative, commercial, and procedural law utilized in making the new laws. Afghanistan benefited most from studies of the laws of Turkey, Germany, Switzerland, and France. Thus we view this period in Afghanistan as the one when new laws were framed, while retaining the religious and national traditional values. There was an interesting movement of modernization forty years ago when Afghan scholars who had no formal training in Islamic studies reorganized the Islamic law in modern form by grouping the old materials in new chapters and articles which would faciliate the finding of specific rules and provide internal consistency. Different doctrines and interpretations made it difficult before this time to ascertain the controlling provisions for many cases. Another difficulty was the fact that the old sources were written in classical Arabic, which made the Islamic law texts difficult for Afghans to understand. First of all, the reorganizers divided the provisions of Islamic law into two categories-