Legitimacies, Indian Identities, and the Law: The Politics of Sex and the Creation of History in Colonial New England

In an early-eighteenth-century legal contest on Chappaquiddick Island, Massachusetts, an Indian leader, Jacob Seeknout, appealed a ruling that under-mined his political authority. Seeknout's lawyer, Benjamin Hawes, crafted an argument that intertwined the sexual legitimacy of Seeknout's ancestors with his political legitimacy; at the same time, Hawes also linked Indians'collective chastity as a "nation" to their sovereign status. This paper examines the economic, religious, criminal, and historical contexts of this argument, exploring the history of Indians'conjugal practices and their reinvention as the criminal acts of fornication. The case illustrates some of the diverse sources of early American law, links between these legal structures and colonialism, and the importance for scholars of attending to the local level in exploring the power of colonial law to shape new racial identities.     

比较法制史:中国法律史学研究的新视角

“比较法制史”无论是作为一种学科分类 ,还是一种重要的方法论 ,长久以来一直引起人们的关注。早期的法制史学者不仅在中国法制史教学与科研中运用比较法制史的方法 ,还在《比较法制史》的教材编写上作了有益的尝试。在新中国的法制史学科发展历程中 ,学者们也很重视比较法制史。 2 1世纪中国法律史学的发展应着眼于全球化 ,及时转换研究视角 ,尽快构建比较法制史的理论体系 ,发挥其在中国法律史教学与研究中的积极作用 ,以提高法律教育的质量。     

A Short History of the British Critical Legal Conference or,the Responsibility of the Critic

The article offers a brief history of the Critical Legal Conference and the emergence of general jurisprudence as a main theoretical school in legal scholarship. It charts the aesthetic, ethical and the current political phase of the school. In the current situation of economic and political crisis, the intellectual and the critic is called to abandon the facile position of neutrality and assume the responsibility of resistance and radical change.     

Cape Legal Idioms and the Colonial Sovereign

A crucial element of sovereignty politics concerns the role that juridical techniques play in recursively creating images of the sovereign. This paper aims to render that dimension explicit by focusing on examples of crime-focused law and colonial rule at the Cape of Good Hope circa 1795. It attempts to show how this law helped to define a colonial sovereign via such idioms as proclamations, inquisitorial criminal procedures, and case narratives framing the atrocity and appropriate punishment for crimes. Referring to primary texts of the time, the paper explores how procedures and narratives of Cape law were also deeply involved in fashioning specific images of the sovereign in whose name it claimed to operate.     

2004年法律史学新进展

2004年国内法律史学的新进展,一是法律史学的机构设置与开展重要的学术活动;二是最新法律史料、教材、论著、译著的出版与简介;三是法律史学的热点问题研究与理论深化。从中可见法律史学在回应社会与学术挑战方面的活力与价值,也可见法律史学人的努力与贡献。     

Laboratories of Statehood: Legal Intervention in Colonial Africa and Today

The immense body of contemporary work aimed at ‘promoting the rule of law’ is often accused of ‘neo‐imperialism’. Yet, despite many points of contiguity between past and present legal interventions, the charge is overbroad and rarely illuminating. This article attempts to move beyond polemic to track concrete historical and structural forerunners of today's rule of law work. Focusing mainly (though not exclusively) on late imperial British endeavours, it traces colonial legal interventions over time, the techniques adopted (and rejected), the shifting normative bases of legitimacy, and moments of strategic recalibration in the face of resistance. Three broad attitudes towards law across the period are (provisionally) characterised as ‘regulative’, ‘constitutive’ and ‘institutive’ moments. In each phase, the Powers treat colonial territories as laboratories of statehood, within which experiments are conducted to locate the optimal configuration of law. In conclusion some counterparts to these moments in today's ‘rule of law’ activities are identified.     

另一重视角--近代以来英美对中国法律文化传统的研究

近代著名学人王国维先生尝说 :“诗人对宇宙人生 ,须入乎其内 ,又须出乎其外。入乎其内 ,故能写之 ;出乎其外 ,故能观之。入乎其内 ,故有生气 ;出乎其外 ,故有高致。”〔 1〕 这话说的虽然是文学写作 ,但其他学术研究大抵也有着相同的道理。我们炎黄子孙 ,生于斯、长于斯 ,要研究自己的文物典籍 ,入乎其内应当不会太难。可是要让我们完全超脱出来 ,摆脱各种感情上的瓜葛 ,俯视高瞻 ,那就不是件易事了。这就是苏轼所说的“不识庐山真面目 ,只缘身在此山中”的道理所在。相反 ,欧西人士 ,与我们远隔重洋 ,容易超脱 ;文化背景迥异 ,观察我们的…     

The Limits of Legal Pluralism in the Roman Empire

The Roman empire was legally pluralistic. But what exactly does this entail in concrete terms? With the growth in historical studies of legal pluralism in the Roman empire, some significant differences in approach have emerged. This article tests and clarifies some of the limits in the current ‘legal pluralism’ conceptual landscape, focussing on disputes and dispute resolution. It is argued that a clearer distinction should be drawn between ‘normative’ and ‘jurisdictional’ pluralism, though both approaches still raise certain conceptual problems. The place of disputes within the family within this wider institutional picture is then taken as a case study in the final part of the paper, and it is suggested that while family disputes can evidence ‘legal pluralism’ in the ‘norms’ sense, there is less to suggest that there were a multitude of officially sanctioned legal fora available for resolving family disputes. As a result, many went beyond the law. This has wider implications for the study of legal pluralism in antiquity and the problem of integrating alternative dispute resolution (ADR) into the pluralistic picture.     

Legal Mobilization on the Terrain of the State: Creating a Field of Immigrant Rights Lawyering in France and the United States

Scholarship on law and social movements has focused attention primarily on the United States, and secondarily on countries that share the Anglo‐American legal tradition. The politics of law and social movements in other national legal contexts remains underexamined. The analysis in this article contrasts legal mobilizations for immigrant rights in France and the United States, and explores the relations between national fields of power and legal practices. I trace the institutionalization of immigrant rights legal organizations in each country and argue that the divergent organizational forms and litigation strategies adopted by professionalized movement organizations reflect the dynamics of the nationally distinct fields of power relations within which law reform has been conducted. My analysis links the material and symbolic resources available to law reformers to the relative authority of private and public juridical actors in each state.     

The Sex Right: A Legal History of the Marital Rape Exemption

How did the American legal elite come to reject the husband's privilege to rape his wife. What is the significance of that rejection. This essay traces theories justifying the marital rape exemption from the 17th century, focusing on the period focusing World War II. The history illustrates how the postwar legal elite's limited progressivism created inconsistent arguments that left the exemption open for attack, an attack that came from within the 1970s feminist movement. Radical feminist rhetoric about sexuality, rape, and marriage pulled away the last layer of theoretical support for the exemption and denounced the sex right it left exposed underneath. Connections in the 1970s, both literal and conceptual, between radical feminists and the legal elite allowed the feminist movement to discredit the exemption within that elite. To interpret the significance of that rejection, I consider how legal language affects people's senses of self. I argue that legal words like "rape,""marriage," and "husband" validate and inform people's, specifically husbands', identities in marriage. By changing the meanings of those legal words, legal reform can eventually change human behavior.