Empire And Legal Thought

Together, the chapters in Empire and Legal Thought make the case for seeing the history of international legal thought and empires against the background of broad geopolitical, diplomatic, administrative, intellectual, religious, and commercial changes over thousands of years.

In 'Law's Empire', Ronald Dworkin relects on the nature of the law, its authority, its application in democracy, the prominent role of interpretation in judgement and the relations of lawmakers and lawgivers in the community.

With incisiveness and lucid style, Dworkin has written a masterful explanation of how the Anglo-American legal system works and on what principles it is grounded. Law's Empire is a full-length presentation of his theory of law that will be studied and debated for years to come.

It is commonly believed that international law originated in respectful relations among free and equal European states. But as Jennifer Pitts shows, international law was forged as much through Europeans' domineering relations with non-European states and empires, leaving a legacy visible in the unequal structures of today's international order.

This wide-ranging volume advances our understanding of law and empire in the early modern world. Distinguished contributors expose new dimensions of legal pluralism in the British, French, Spanish, Portuguese, and Ottoman empires. In-depth analyses probe such topics as the shifting legal privileges of corporations, the intertwining of religious and legal thought, and the effects of clashing legal authorities on sovereignty and subjecthood. Case studies show how a variety of individuals engage with the law and shape the contours of imperial rule. The volume reaches from Peru to New Zealand to Europe to capture the varieties and continuities of legal pluralism and to probe the analytic power of the concept of legal pluralism in the comparative study of empires. For legal scholars, social scientists, and historians, Legal Pluralism and Empires, 1500-1850 maps new approaches to the study of empires and the global history of law.

'Legalist Empire' explores the intimate connections between international law and empire in the United States from 1898 to 1919.

Examines early modern Spanish contributions to international relations by focusing on ambivalence of natural rights in European colonial expansion to the Americas.

This book analyses the states of emergency exposing the intersections between colonial law, international law, imperialism and racial discrimination.

Brian P. Owensby is Associate Professor in the University of Virginia's Corcoran Department of History. He is the author of Intimate Ironies: Modernity and the Making of Middle-Class Lives in Brazil (Stanford, 1999).