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Globalization

Comparative and Foreign Law

Annelise Riles

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Full-Text Articles in Law

The Anti-Network: Private Global Governance, Legal Knowledge, And The Legitimacy Of The State, Annelise Riles Dec 2014

The Anti-Network: Private Global Governance, Legal Knowledge, And The Legitimacy Of The State, Annelise Riles

Annelise Riles

Global private law has become the source of both anxiety and euphoria. Inherent in this fascination is the assumption that global private law threatens the legitimacy of the state by taking over its functions through new techniques of governance. In this article, I build upon research in one arena of global private governance, the production of legal documentation for the global swap markets, to challenge the most prominent assumptions about private law beyond the state. I argue that rather than focusing on how global private law is or is not an artifact of state power, a body of private norms, …


Wigmore's Treasure Box: Comparative Law In The Era Of Information, Annelise Riles Dec 2014

Wigmore's Treasure Box: Comparative Law In The Era Of Information, Annelise Riles

Annelise Riles

This article revisits the work of a canonical but quixotic figure in early American comparative law, John Henry Wigmore, as a lens through which to imagine what comparative law's role might be in the era of globalization. Wigmore's "pictorial method", compared here to the "treasure boxes" of Ming and Ch'ing Dynasty Chinese emperors, in which precious objects of different scales and eras were appreciated aesthetically side by side, presents a challenge to the many "modernist" approaches to comparative law in existence today. An exploration of the intellectual history of comparative law through the disjuncture of Wigmore's work engenders a treatment …