Organized by Nurfadzilah Yahaya (nyahaya@princeton.edu) and Rohit De(rohitde@princeton.edu)

For any questions, please email coloniesoflaw@gmail.com.

We are pleased to announce that our conference on the Colonies and Postcolonies of Law will be held at Princeton University on the 18th of March 2011. This event, which is open to the public, is supported by the Department of History, the Graduate School and the Program in Law and Public Affairs, and will bring together scholars of law, history, anthropology and political science.

The study of the relationship between law and colonialism has taken two broad trajectories. On one hand, scholars have highlighted how law provided the instruments for the creation of the colonial state, allowing it to exercise a vast amount of power in restructuring the colony. Conversely, law opened up avenues of resistance for colonized populations. This conference aims to go beyond this dichotomy by focusing on law as a site of constant negotiation which produced new forms of bureaucracy and documentation practices. As colonial legal systems cast long shadows and formed the bedrock of the national legal systems today, this conference will also examine how these colonial legal regimes influence postcolonial nations. The last few years has seen a growth of interest in colonial legal history to which this conference hopes to contribute by bringing early career scholars together in conversation with senior scholars.

The program will include a keynote address by Lauren Benton of NYU on Justice by Despots: Patterns of Imperial Legal Politics". The preliminary schedule appears below. The event is open to the public. To register, please contact coloniesoflaw@gmail.com Abstracts are available at http://www.princeton.edu/~nyahaya/Coloniesoflaw.pdf

Coloines and Postcolonies of Law

Preliminary Schedule Friday, March 18, 2011:

8:30 am Continental Breakfast served
8:45 am Welcome and introductory remarks
8:45-10:30
Panel 1 - Courting Destiny: Judges and Political Change
Discussant: Bhavani Raman (Princeton University)

Patrick Peel (Ohio University), The American Justice of the Peace, Legal Populism and Social Intermediation: 1645 to 1860 Paul Swanepoel, ( University of Leiden), Judicial Choice during the Mau Mau Rebellion in Kenya, 1952-1960’ Anna Leah Fidelis T. Castañeda,(Harvard Law School, S.J.D. ’09), Civilizing the Filipino Public: Colonialism and the American Constitutional Tradition in the Philippine Islands

10:45 am – 11:00 am Coffee Break
11:00 am – 12.45 pm
Panel 2 – Law, Capital and the Global Order Discussant: Hendrik Hartog (Princeton University)

Omar Cheta ( NYU) What Did Commerce Mean in Late Ottoman Egypt? Doreen Lustig, (NYU School of Law), Abolition of Slavery in the League of Nations: The Case of Firestone in Liberia Michael Fakhri, (University of Oregon School of Law) The 1937 International Sugar Agreement: Neo-Colonial Cuba And Economic Aspects Of the League Of Nations

12:45 am – 1:30 pm
Plenary speech by Lauren Benton (NYU), “Justice by Despots: Patterns of Imperial Legal Politics”

1:30 pm -2:30 pm Lunch

2:30 pm -4:15 pm Panel 3- Competing Legitimacies: Religious Law and Colonial Authority Discussant: Mitra Sharafi (University of Wisconsin-Madison Law School)

Julia Stephens, (Harvard University) Defining a Lex Loci for British India: Sovereignty, Evangelicalism, and the Origins of Personal Law Nada Moumtaz, ( CUNY Graduate Centre) What of the “interest of the waqf?” French mandate legislation and articulations of the Lebanese public good
Sarah Ghabrial, (McGill University) Le ‘Fiqh francisé’?: Law reform and the Modern Muslim Family in Algeria, 1890-1918

4:15 pm- 4:30 pm Coffee break

4:30 pm -6:15 pm
Panel 4 - Border Crossings Discussant: Michelle McKinley (University of Oregon School of Law)

Joseph Younger, (Princeton University)“Monstrous and Illegal Proceedings:” Law, Violence and the Local Politics of Cross-Border Property in Alegrete, Brazil (1852- 1864)
Catherine Evans, (Princeton University) One flew east, one flew west: Medical jurisprudence and British readings of the Indian criminal mind, 1850-1900
Poornima Padipati, (University of Chicago) Time Zones: Anthropology, Tribes and Contractual Space in Colonial India

6:15 pm – 6:30 pm
Closing remarks