Colonies and Postcolonies of Law Conference: Schedule now available

The schedule for the Colonies and Postcolonies of Law conference, organized by Nurfadzilah Yahaya and Rohit De, is now available. The conference will take place on March 18, 2011, at Princeton University, and is open to the public [rsvp information below]. It is supported by the Department of History, the Graduate School and the Program in Law and Public Affairs.

Here's the conference description:

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.

And the schedule:

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

UPDATE: If you would like to attend this conference, please rsvp to coloniesoflaw@gmail.com.

Hat tip: H-Law