Legal History Commons^™

The Jewel In The Crown: Can India’S Strict Liability Doctrine Deepen Our Understanding Of Tort Law Theory?, Deepa Badrinarayana

Deepa Badrinarayana

Before Bhopal: Explaining The Infrequency Of Railway Accident Victim Compensation, 1889-1931: Karmic Fatalism Or Colonial Law And Policy?, Peter Karsten

peter karsten

Countless thousands experienced the loss of property or suffered injury or death due to negligence on railways of India during the 19th and 20th centuries. This essay notes striking differences between the treatment of victims in India and those in other Imperial jurisdictions, and in the similar common-law United States. Two explanations for the differences have been proposed: (1) Cultural ones: These include the propensity to view one’s turning to legal remedies in India as a “slot-machine,” and fatalistic “karmic vision” (more generally referred to as “Hindu fatalism),” which is said to lead injured parties to accept their lot and …

Making Claims: Indian Litigants And The Expansion Of The English Legal World In The Eighteenth Century, Arthur Fraas

Arthur Mitchell Fraas

This paper explores the British Imperial legal world of the mid-eighteenth century. Within this period, the previously confined spaces of English law and legal institutions became open to an ever widening set of legal subjects, both people as well as places. The paper focuses on what was at the time perhaps England’s most remote and murkily defined legal space, the East India Company (EIC) settlements at Madras, Bombay and Calcutta. The paper shows how a series of legal actors: metropolitan judges, Indian litigants and elite lawyers, first bridged the legal worlds of England and the subcontinent. I argue that by …

To Compete Globally, Brics Nations Need Reputation, Not Imitation, Ahmed E. Souaiaia

Ahmed E SOUAIAIA

The economic, political, and social rise of the Western block of nations was founded on the single most enduring currency: reputation. Reputation, the source of credibility and trust, is the real asset that allows the U.S. to project its stature around the world. BRICS nations cannot rise to prominence by mimicking developed countries. They must build their reputation first. Wealth is only a byproduct of this more precious commodity, and countries who have it can squander it just as emerging economies can acquire it. For either of those results to happen in any country, circumstantial conditions and principled actions must …

'Mass Of Madness': Jurisprudence In E.M. Forster's A Passage To India, Allen P. Mendenhall

Allen Mendenhall

Law-and-literature scholars have paid scant attention to E. M. Forster’s oeuvre, which abounds in legal information and which situates itself in a unique jurisprudential context. Of all his novels, A Passage to India (1924) interrogates the law most rigorously, especially as it implicates massive programs of ‘liberal’ imperialism and ‘humanitarian’ intervention, as well as less grand but equally dubious legal apparatuses – jail, bail, discovery, courtrooms – that police and pervert Chandrapore, the fictional Indian city in which the novel is set. The study of law in Anglo-India is particularly telling, if troubling, because India served as ‘a model for …

Child Labor In India, A Consumer’S Perspective: Identifying Causes, Acknowledging Realities, And Proposing Incentives For Improvement, Vanessa L. Deniro Esq.

Vanessa L. De Niro

The exploitation of modern child labor in developing countries persists in part because of consumers like us. However, in light of increased global trade liberalization in developing countries and free market principles, cheap labor is what allows these nations to have a competitive edge in the global economy. With that said, a category of people that work longer hours for meager wages, absent unionization or labor protections, is an efficient means of production and justified by the economy of scales. Child laborers, exploited by employers competing in the global economy, are simply a product of laissez-fair economics, participating and contributing …