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The paper examines modern corporations law as an integralcomponent of colonial policy in the nineteenth century and explores the ways in which the growth of the `modern' corporation was intimately tied to`orientalism' in literature and art through processes such as the exoticisation of foreign corporate undertakings in elaborate prospectuses,in advertising and leafleting campaigns, and through the deployment of `art' in the form of panoramas and `high art' in the form of landscape such as those of von Guerard and his followers in Australia, all in the service of creating a `desire' for corporate investment amongst the middle classes. The paper will also explore the manner in which the architectonics of corporate law itself, particularly in areas such as foreign company registration provisions in Australia and the managing agent provisions in the Indian companies legislation were blatant mechanisms in effecting colonial subservience. The paper also examines the manner in which certain tensions might adhere to companies legislation when its role as a `liberal' vehicle for investment from the `centre' ran up against pernicious and illiberal aspects of colonialism such as racism, as epitomized by policies of apartheid in South Africa. The paper examines how in such circumstances these tensions were resolved. Finally the paper examines what the embedding of `colonial' concepts in the deeper structures, what perhaps could even be characterized as the collective unconscious of corporate law means in the postcolonial present. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Between 1924 and 1937, judicial decisions in the British Mandate of Palestine could not rest solely upon the testimony of a single witness; in both criminal and civil trials, all testimony required corroboration. As Palestine's Chief Justice Michael McDonnell noted, this provision was unique to Palestine and was unparalleled in other British dependencies. In my paper I consider why a colonial government, charged with maintaining law and order, would impose upon itself such a significant hurdle towards obtaining convictions. Archival research suggests a number of explanations which gravitate between the overt and covert rationales of the rule: at least initially, the rule was justified as a manifestation of British cultural sensitivity towards local custom, Ottoman law and Muslim law's two-witness requirement. However, confidential correspondences between Palestine's High Commissioner, Chief Justice and Attorney General, especially during the 1936 disturbances - when the corroboration requirement's abolishment was considered - suggest that the requirement stemmed from colonial prejudice toward Palestine's population. The correspondences addresses the low credibility of the population, that stemmed from their alleged low moral character, inability to distinguish fact from fiction and tendency to settle clan and tribal feuds by offering false incriminatory testimony. Through the prism of this rule, my paper suggests that procedural law in Palestine was by no means merely technical and was not simply a replication of the law of other British colonies, as existing literature often suggests. Rather, procedural rules were customized for the Palestine Mandate and often reflect colonial perceptions, prejudice and executive interests. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper is an historical analysis of the ways in which colonial perceptions and interests shaped the rules of evidence in British-controlled territories in the Middle East during the early to mid 20th century, with Mandate Palestine serving as the focal point of the study. The paper challenges the dominant account whereby procedural law in British courts in the colonies during the first half of the 20th century followed the English procedural practices of the period. The paper highlights the ways in which evidence law in the colonies differed from the rules that applied in England at the time and discusses the reasons for these differences. The paper describes how perceptions of the native population, its character for truthfulness, the British perception of Arab procedure as a derivative of a system of "collective justice," along with other factors came to shape the law of evidence applied by the British colonial judiciary in Palestine and to some degree in other Middle Eastern territories. The paper further calls into question the assumption that British colonial rules of evidence were concerned primarily with rectitude of decision and demonstrates how evidence rules were often crafted to serve executive interests of the colonial government, such as obtaining a higher rate of convictions and maintaining order during times of crisis, even at the price of the accuracy of fact-finding. The paper also discusses the attitude of the Arab population in Palestine towards the change in the Ottoman rules of evidence, which were loosely based upon Muslim law, and the population's resistance towards change and the British reaction to such protests. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, colonialism stands as a prime instance of Giorgio Agamben's "rule of exception", exemplified in the Canadian context by the instatement of land treaties and the Indian Act. This reading of Agamben supports my claim that a more politically-astute interpretation of the state of exception leads to insights on how and why the "rule of exception" must be challenged, particularly as it represents a taking of Kantian logic to its own extreme ends. References to postcolonial texts by Aimé Césaire and Frantz Fanon lend greater support to the interpretation of colonialism as the "rule of exception" on two fronts: first, in historically contextualizing from the colonial perspective the type of logic of sovereign power that places life and justice secondary (or in service) to the state, and; second, in contributing to the task of theorizing the type of "legitimate" dissent that could effectively challenge the state of exception, as well as state law as a force of sovereignty in general. The particular historical instance of the Haudenosaunee from the Six Nations Reserve in Southern Ontario is referenced to help illustrate the complex of relations discussed in this paper. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Colonial occupations produce societies where legal institutions which have an ambivalent role due their tenuous jurisdiction. In the case of Palestine the last four decades of occupation have enmeshed Israeli legal institutions and norms with Palestinian ones compromising the legitimacy of the latter. Israeli legal institutions and doctrine undermine Palestinian's efforts to establish the rule of law. Thus it is to the Israeli courts that challenges to the wall are necessary directed. Despite its established illegality under the international law, Israeli effective control leaves Palestinians little choice than to mount challenges to it within the more limited contexts and on grounds arguable within Israeli law. At the same time despite the creation of the Palestinian Authority and the withdrawal and redeployment of Israeli forces from some part of the West Bank - up until 2001 - the Israeli military maintains a system of military courts. Through this system about 10,000 indictments are brought each year and they have jurisdiction over "administrative detention." In 2005-6 some 2700 Palestinians were detained without trial under this procedure. This indicates the porous character of Palestinian jurisdiction which saps its legitimacy. The argument in this paper is that thee studies emphasis the technical aspects of law and legal method. It encourages a positivist mode of thinking in which the isolation of law from actual (occupied colonial) society is encouraged. Law and Society in a Palestinian context can only begin from the engagement with law in the social environment of occupation. The paper will engage with the work of Said (1978, 1993), Mitchell (1988. 2002), Cohn (1998) Benton (2002), Massad (2006). ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers the social life of a colonial land law in Hong Kong. It focuses on the designation of certain people and villages that pre-dated British occupation in late 19th-century Hong Kong as indigenous or "Original." The way this designation and its attribution of land ownership in fact formalized a colonial misunderstanding of customary Chinese law is well-known, and I do not seek in this paper to reiterate that critique. Instead, I explore how the peculiar property rights accorded Original inhabitants through their colonial designation as such have been re-inflected in Hong Kong in recent years through creative real estate investment strategies and political mobilizations, including an attempt by a fishing village to achieve status and rights akin to those of "Original" inhabitants on account of their village's existence prior to colonial rule. I conclude with some implications of these examples for understanding the legal legacies of colonialism and relations between law and context. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Centuries of colonialism and the later policy of apartheid institutionalised and normalised racial discrimination in South African society. The acceptance of constitutional democracy, a justiciable bill of rights and the rule of law in 1994 officially sounded the death knell for racial discrimination, but thirteen years after this legal revolution, the legacy of the racial past lingers on and still demands redress. The legal response to unfair discrimination is rooted in the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, 1996 which entrenches equality as both a right and a value and which prohibits unfair discrimination. Parliament gave effect to the constitutional commitment to the creation of a non-racial and non-sexist society by passing the Promotion of Equality and Prevention of Unfair Discrimination Act 4 of 2000. The Act specifically provides for the creation of special courts - Equality Courts - to hear complaints regarding unfair discrimination on listed grounds (of which race is one) and also unlisted ones.This paper considers whether the statutory framework meets the constitutional requirements regarding equality and the eradication of racial discrimination and concludes that while on paper the benchmarks have been met, problems might occur in practice. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At the time of the Revolution, the institutions adopted for tax administration in most colonies were small-scale, if not strictly local, holdovers from earlier eras. The job of the collector had some of the aspects of an 'office' in the medieval sense; the collector would rarely would have been viewed as employees and acted only according to warrants. The collector's job was to enforce the essentially political decisions of the tax-setting body, with varying degrees of entirely localized and generally unreviewable discretion. Courts were used to ensure that the collectors performed their duties in the sense that they paid over the revenues due, but only with great difficulty could the courts be used to intervene between the collector and the taxpayer. By the beginning of the twentieth century, however, most jurisdictions had moved to revenue systems that were frequently more centralized and certainly more recognizable as part of a professional bureaucratic system. Courts were more likely to be playing a regular role in tax administration, with both the taxpayer and the collector finding court intervention available with far greater frequency. On appropriate occasions, courts could even be used to block the collection of a tax before it could start. This evolution of the tax administration process, from an almost extra-legal process to an administrative process answerable like most others to the supervision of the courts, in many senses stalled in the early twentieth century. For all of the recent bluster about taxpayer's rights in Congress, the interaction between the courts and collector is still less than that between the courts and other large administrative agencies. This paper outlines the contours of this history and suggests some tentative explanations for both the initial legalization of tax administration, and the limited extent of that legalization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2003 Achille Mbembe published an essay, "Necropolitics," which explores a model of sovereignty whose central project is "the generalized instrumentalization of human existence and the material destruction of human bodies and population." He argues that the "contemporary colonial occupation of Palestine" is the "most accomplished form of necropower." According to Mbembe, another manifestation of necropower is manifest in militia economies, where war machines (for example, militias or rebel movements) control populations by forcibly containing or displacing unarmed populations. In my paper, I will examine the form of the utility of necropower as an analytical category for understanding the legal and political infrastructure of the Palestinian refugee camp, which is outside the colony and accessible to war machines. My case study is the Nahr el Bared refugee camp in Lebanon, where the Lebanese army completely destroyed the camp while attacking militants in the Fatah al-Islam group, which had become embedded in the camp. I will also analyze the Palestinian refugees efforts to resist necropolitics by re-establishing their homes and communities. Through interviews I will explore whether law has any significance in the refugees' resistance to necropolitics. Achille Mbembe, "Necropolitics," Public Culture (2003) 15 (1), 11-40. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Palestine is much referred to in legal discourses but little identified. For nine decades Palestine has been designated as a Mandate by the League of Nations, partitioned by the United Nations and identified as occupied territory by the International Court of Justice. None the less Palestine remains contested as the elliptical formations of the Oslo, the roadmap and Annapolis signify. This paper seeks to track the manner in which the mimetic ambiguity of the legal discourse contributes to and resolves the compromising of Palestine. The argument will challenge the dominant Palestinian legal narrative (e.g. Cattan). This has placed much faith in an idealist account of law, although dressed in positivist clothes. It has assumed a close relationship between Palestinian political objectives and international legal values. As a result legal discourse has been understood as a finished product rather than as work in progress. Palestinian accounts in particular have drawn on a binary divide that counter poses just anti-colonialism to colonial injustice. This assumption about law's relationship to colonialism is problematic (e.g. Fitzpatrick) and leaves unchallenged the marginalization of Palestine and Palestinians. I will suggest it is not in rejecting the ambiguity of law's articulation that this process can be reversed but, rather in embracing it. It is ambiguity that offers the space for cosmopolitan readings (e.g. Fine). It is through such readings that we can begin to disentangle law from colonialism's hold and perhaps place Palestine on the map. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Of late, discussions of the global city have proliferated. But what makes the city global? In this paper, I explore this question through the emergence of the city in the late nineteenth century. Focused on colonial migrations, the (restricted) mobility of aboriginal peoples and the movements of migrants from China and elsewhere, I track the emergent city as a global site of economic, social, and cultural exchange. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Occupation—original and on-going - is core to the meaning of a "settler state," and is an inherently violent and collective phenomenon. In this paper I first identify some of the methodological challenges for bringing into view not only the violent nature of the colonial present in settler states such as Canada, but the fact that white bodies are collectively implicated in (and therefore responsible for) this on-going violence. Building upon the work of Hook 2005, Riggs/Augoustinos 2005, Gregory 2004, Moreton 2004 and others, I argue that an understanding of the present as a "colonial force field"—one wherein the modern concept of property continues to have ontological force (Mohanram 1999, Farley 2005, Adams 2006)--holds particular promise for exposing white Canadians as a violent collective body. I then bring this notion of a colonial force field to bear on my analysis of the judicial reasons regarding the recent 2006 "Indian Residential School Settlement Agreement". I show how the responses on the part of Canadian law (and government) to the past colonial violence of 'Indian Residential Schools' serve to reproduce the violence of a white collective body occupying Indigenous land. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the Australian state of Queensland, people still go to prison for using "offensive language". It might be thought that this reflects a prudishness or linguistic sensitivity in Australian society and culture. On the contrary, "four-letter words" are widely used in private conversations, public broadcasts, and even in commercially-produced greeting cards. As observed by one magistrate, listeners to one of the most popular national radio stations during breakfast "cannot help be assailed by [four-letter words] with regularity between mouthfuls of toast". This paper brings research in anthropology, linguistics and criminology to an examination of this issue. From early colonial times, discriminatory legislation made it possible to arrest and charge Aboriginal people for offences such as "indiscipline" and "immoral behaviour", which were not applicable to the non-Aboriginal population. Since the repeal of this discriminatory legislation in 1984, the selective application of the "offensive language" law plays an important role in the criminalisation of Aboriginal people, which is central to contemporary neocolonialism. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Postcoloniality is a theoretical and political perspective centered on the idea that colonialism did not end with the end of formal colonialism. Colonialism involved, among other things, the violent disruption of the basic livelihood of vast populations (land, water, shelter, community life, health, etc.), brought about by foreign powers. Since the end of colonialism did not put an end to this disruption, decolonization is an unfinished task. In this paper, I focus on land grabbing and the struggle for land, which are at the core of both capitalism and colonialism. An old basic-as old as human life on earth-, land is here conceived of as a new basic to underline the multiple dimensions of the most recent legal and political struggles around it: agriculture, natural resources, agrarian reform, biodiversity, historical reparation, territoriality, self-determination, and cultural identity ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Genocide Convention of 1948 is universally hailed as a corner stone of the modern international law of human rights and the protection of minorities. Yet jurists, intellectuals and others have found it difficult to reconcile the Convention's narrow definition of genocide with attempts to confront those who seek to exterminate certain defined groups. Does the Convention provide sufficient protection to those who need its comfort? This paper seeks to answer this question. It will also investigate whether the categories of protected persons under the Convention actually act as an impediment to protection by affirming the categorization of people along racist and colonialist lines. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Precolonialism: Nelson Mandela and the Law of the LawCarrol Clarkson and Peter FitzpatrickIn his autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom, Mandela expresses his admiration and respect for both the law and its judicial institution, even as the pervasive legal oppressions of apartheid are being brought to bear upon him. Derrida, in his essay, "The Laws of Reflection: Nelson Mandela, in Admiration," asks whether the law that Mandela admires is "essentially a thing of the West." He goes on to ask, "Does its formal universality retain some irreducible link with European history?" If this is the case, then the struggle against apartheid would amount to a "domestic war that the West carried on with itself, in its own name." But Mandela also expresses his admiration for the "structure and organization of early African societies" in a time "before the arrival of the white man." In opposing the apartheid laws, Mandela has recourse to what Derrida variously terms a "superior law," a "law beyond legality," an "unfailing sentiment of justice," "conscience," a "law of laws" … Yet these "superior laws" are not ideals detached from a contrary legal reality. They are qualities intrinsic to the being of law, to its integral extensiveness, enabling law to extend to a precolonial alterity - an alterity reducible neither to "the ethnographic present" nor to a pervasive occidental domination. Just what that alterity could be and just how it could be evoked by a condign law in South Africa are matters explored in this paper. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the 17th century, Ceylon (Sri Lanka) fell under the sway of the Dutch, and Roman-Dutch law became the common law of that colony. At the very start of the 19th century, the English displaced the Dutch, and although English law was introduced by statute in certain pockets, it didn't manage to uproot what the Dutch had left behind. Yet, in a number of crucial respects this overlay of two very different legal systems brought about a fascinating interplay of forces in what was to many a forgotten outpost of empire. In this paper, attention is focussed on the law of contract within this colonial context. Specifically, the tension between the English doctrine of consideration, which was introduced in the context of the sale of goods, and the rather different Roman-Dutch idea of causa is explored. These two concepts are based at the very heart of the systems of which they are a part, and their cheek-by-jowl co-habitation strikes the purist from both camps as almost logically untenable. Therefore an exploration of their interaction in Ceylon provides a sterling opportunity to examine how legal ideas developed and reacted to each other in this particularly rich corner of the colonial periphery, and to pose the question how the colonial setting shaped these legal processes. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The literature on conversion in colonial India is dominated by the study of South Asians' conversion to Christianity. The key question is whether conversion was driven by genuine belief, or by the aspiration to acquire the accompanying social and material perks arguably anticipated by new converts. Conversion to Zoroastrianism has gone unmentioned, but it was the crux of two high-profile trust cases in Bombay and Rangoon between 1906 and 1925. This paper asks how the Zoroastrian conversion debates, filtered through legal mechanisms, fit into our larger picture of conversion in colonial India. It concludes that the distinction between belief and accompanying perks cannot be mapped onto the Zoroastrian case study. Through litigation, the Parsi debate became polarized between orthodox opponents of conversion, who argued that the lower castes would convert to avail themselves of Parsi charitable trust funds; and pro-conversion reformists, who argued that it would allow social inclusion for the small number of people who had generally sought conversion in the past: the non-Parsi mates, children, and (formerly) slaves of Parsi men. Neither side brought up belief. The assumption that belief constitutes the core of religious membership is a distinctly Christian one that is inappropriate in the Zoroastrian context. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The talk will examine and situate a discourse of the United States Island Dependencies. By exploring the post-Spanish-American War as well as the post-World War II island acquisitions, I will illustrate how, despite its own anti-colonial beginnings, this country is the world's largest overseas territorial power. I will offer a probing examination of the history of eight countries and their people as well as their treatment at the hands of the United States, the country that has ruled many of them for over 100 years. The examination will describe the contexts of the conquests and the similarities in the treatment of Puerto Rico, Guam, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Micronesia, American Samoa, the Northern Marianas, the Marshall Islands, and Palau. The study will also highlight the fact that during the era of Dred Scott and the conquests of the indigenous territories on the mainland this country was also concurring and disenfranchising millions of island people. This analysis will emphasize U.S. constitutional law and international law. In the constitutional analysis, I will explore the second-class citizen status of millions living on these territories and will compare American legal rhetoric concerning citizenship and its precepts of equality and justice with the theoretical underpinnings and application of U.S. colonialism. As part of its international law analysis, the work will examine the U.S.'s integral role in the development of the international norm of self-determination, paradoxically comparing these efforts with its own conquests. The examination will also delve into the peculiar irony that few in the world community, media, general public, or academic circles recognize - the fact that the United States has colonies. Perhaps more importantly, the profound political and legal effects of these conquests and consequent subjugation will be examined. This, in turn, will result in an examination of the hegemonic tools that are used to foster colonialism and that at the same time conceal it, including granting U.S. citizenship, encouraging economic dependency, and developing international status classifications, i.e., commonwealth status. Some of these tools have supported a sense of belonging with this country and others have promoted a sense of sovereignty for the territories. For instance, status classifications, such as federated state and commonwealth, purport to afford autonomy, though the reality is otherwise. Economic dependency, on the other hand has served to promote a need-based desire to maintain an association with the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From the 1880s to the present day, the U.S. Supreme Court has abdicated its obligations to uphold the constitution by declaring that the "political" branches of government have full or complete power with respect to immigration matters as well as relations with American Indian nations and external colonies such as Puerto Rico. By denying peoples subject to U.S. jurisdiction constitutional protections and simultaneously refusing to enforce international law, the Supreme Court is undermining not only fundamental human rights but the rule of law itself. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Lorena Bobbitt case brought to the fore neuralgic sore spots of the social imaginary of both national and transnational spaces in relation to race, gender and colonial histories that still impinge upon cultural practices and representations. In this article I explore how different theoretical approaches to the performative, literary and cultural aspects of trials, particularly show trials, can illuminate the sexual and racial politics that underpinned the public's fascination with this case. The first section sets the stage by addressing the location of Latinos in the American and Trans-American social imaginaries with a special focus on postcolonial debates and the notion of coloniality of power. The second section addresses how performance studies, literary analysis and anthropological theories have fruitfully recast the study of (show) trials to better appreciate their cultural and political implications. The third section analyzes the stories put forward by both the defense and the prosecution and how they reenacted highly problematic racial and sexual tropes characteristic of the coloniality of power. The fourth and final section analyzes Lorena's performance at trial from the perspective of Butler's theory of gender peformativity and discusses the legal strategy of presenting Lorena as the supplicant immigrant. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When the British arrived in India, they brought with them their presuppositions concerning the proper degree of separation of law from religion, presuppositions that were derived in part from Protestant Christianity. What they found in Hinduism, however, was a confusion or commingling of law with religious precepts that recalled ancient Judaism. Worst of all was the confounding of both law and religion with external rituals that resembled idolatry. Just as Christians had earlier characterized such Jewish practices as circumcision and dietary restrictions as forms of empty ceremonial abrogated by the Gospel, the British in India evaluated analogous Hindu practices, and especially the institutions of caste, as marks of social and religious distinction incompatible with Christian universalism. From explicit missionary polemics to the ostensibly religiously neutral policies of the colonial administration, such Christian categories influenced a particular division of labor between law and religion, or what we call, for lack of a better word, the "secularization" of Hinduism. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]