Law and Empire

Catalog description

One of the most significant global challenges humanity faces today is the fair distribution of justice to individuals and groups. Many nation-states are struggling to curb discrimination based on race, religion, and gender, amongst others, with legal activists pointing towards the proper implementation of the 'rule of law' as a potential solution to humanity's woes. But what do we mean by the rule of law and can this system bring about these desired transformations? In order to help resolve this question, this course turns to Empire, the political structure under which people have lived for much of human existence and where debates around justice, order, and the rule of law first entered the modern political canon. Our course will further explore the role of law in the framework of imperial expansion and the possibilities and limitations of a rules-based society for imperial subjects. Employing a historical, political, economic, sociological, and legal lens, we will begin by analyzing the different dimensions through which law altered and was shaped by social behavior. Our emphasis will be on British imperialism during the nineteenth and twentieth century. We will link particular colonial legal institutions like prisons, police, and court cases to social life and, amongst other themes, analyze the role of religion, mainly Muslim thought in South Asia, race and class, gender and family, property and criminal law, as well as labor and the market.