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Rethinking the Masters of Comparative Law
By
Annelise Riles
Description
Comparative Law is
experiencing something of a renaissance,as legal scholars and
practitioners traditionally outside the discipline find it newly
relevant in projects such as constitution and code drafting, the
harmonization of laws, court decisions, or as a tool for
understanding the globalization of legal institutions. On the other
hand, comparativists within the discipline find themselves asking
questions about the identity of comparative law, what it is that
makes comparative law unique as a discipline, what is the way
forward.
This book,
designed with courses in comparative law as well as scholarly
projects in mind, brings a new generation of comparativists together
to reflect on the character of their discipline. It aims to incite
curiosity and debate about contemporary issues within comparative law
by bringing the discipline into conversation with debates in
anthropology, literary and cultural studies, and critical theory. The
book addresses questions such as what is the disciplinary identity of
comparative law; how should we understand its relationship to
colonialism, modernism, the Cold War, and other wider events that
have shaped its history; what is its relationship to other projects
of comparison in the arts, social sciences and humanities; and how
has comparative law contributed at different times and in different
parts of the world to projects of legal reform. Each of the essays
frames its intervention around a close reading of the life and work
of one formative character in the history of the discipline. Taken as
a whole, the book offers a fresh and sophisticated picture of the
discipline and its future.
Contents
Montesquieu: the
specter of despotism and the origins of comparative law (Robert
Launay); Max Weber and the uncertainties of categorical comparative
law (Ahmed White); Rethinking Hermann Kantorowicz: Free law, American
legal realism and the legacy of anti-formalism (Vivian Grosswald
Curran); Encountering amateurism: John Henry Wigmore and the uses of
American formalism (Annelise Riles); Nobushige Hozumi: A skillful
transplanter of western legal thought into Japanese soil (Hitoshi
Aoki); Sanhuri, comparative law and Islamic legal reform, or why
cultural authenticity is impossible (Amr Shalakany); Sculpting the
agenda of comparative law: Ernst Rabel and the facade of language
(David J. Gerber); René David: At the head of the family
(Jorge L. Esquirol); Postmodern-Structural Comparative Jurisprudence?
The aggregate impact of R. B. Schlesinger and R. Sacco to the
understanding of the legal order (Ugo Mattei).
Annelise Riles is
a Professor of Law at Cornell Law School.
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