Law’s Empire, Empire’s Law: Justice, Law and Colonialism

This theme aims to approach the categories of Law, Empire and Colonialism from a variety of angles: Law within Empire and the Empire within Law; Law within Colonialism and Colonialism within Law; as well as the multiple theoretical and historical links between these categories. It addresses the interplay between law and socio-economic, political and cultural Empire(s), with due emphasis on colonial and post-colonial structures. It will discuss how the instrumentality of law acts within these totalities to initiate and strengthen the control of dominant regimes and, significantly, generates a totalising tendency within law itself.

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The violent and totalising control by colonial regimes led to the fossilisation of local normative orderings, and dramatically altered the nature of law and justice (and the state) in the colonies. The particular logics in relation to law and the state so initiated did not end with the ‘de-colonial’ moment; rather, they have continued in the 'age of Empire' as well. This does not imply that colonialism and Empire should be considered as specific, disparate historical events, but also as conceptual categories that are interwoven in history and interconnected in their logics.

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In this regard, we request scholars and researchers working in these conceptual areas to approach the theme from a variety of standpoints. Possible topics might include:

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• The nature of sovereignty within colonialism and Empire

• The legal experiments in (Empire's) colonies

•  The encounters between local and hegemonic legal and normative orders

• Legal histories

• Gender, law and colonial

• Nature of the state in (pre/post)colonial environment

• The creation and governance of the colonial/Empire's subject

• Transplantation of law and justice from Metropole to the colony

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Conveners

Raza Saeed (raza.saeed@warwick.ac.uk) and Carol Jones (c.jones2@wlv.ac.uk)