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Full-Text Articles in Law

Representing In-Between: Law, Anthropology, And The Rhetoric Of Interdisciplinarity, Annelise Riles Dec 2014

Representing In-Between: Law, Anthropology, And The Rhetoric Of Interdisciplinarity, Annelise Riles

Annelise Riles

This article considers how lawyers and nonlawyers discuss the contribution of interdisciplinary scholarship to the law as a means of rethinking the relationship between these differences. The article first examines the arguments of the nineteenth-century lawyer Henry Maine and of the twentieth-century anthropologist Edmund Leach on the subject, and notes the difference between Maine's emphasis on "movement" from one theoretical discovery to another and Leach's emphasis on creating relationships between disciplines by exploiting a "space in between" the two. Then, turning to contemporary scholarship in legal anthropology, "Law and Society," and the sociology of law, the article critiques the rigid …


From Multiculturalism To Technique: Feminism, Culture, And The Conflict Of Laws Style, Karen Knop, Ralf Michaels, Annelise Riles Dec 2014

From Multiculturalism To Technique: Feminism, Culture, And The Conflict Of Laws Style, Karen Knop, Ralf Michaels, Annelise Riles

Annelise Riles

The German Chancellor, the French President, and the British Prime Minister have each grabbed world headlines with pronouncements that their states' policies of multiculturalism have failed. As so often, domestic debates about multiculturalism, as well as foreign policy debates about human rights in non- Western countries, revolve around the treatment of women. Yet feminists are no longer even certain how to frame, let alone resolve, the issues raised by veiling, polygamy, and other cultural practices oppressive to women by Western standards. Feminism has become perplexed by the very concept of "culture." This impasse is detrimental both to women's equality and …


Property As Legal Knowledge: Means And Ends, Annelise Riles Dec 2014

Property As Legal Knowledge: Means And Ends, Annelise Riles

Annelise Riles

This article takes anthropologists’ renewed interest in property theory as an opportunity to consider legal theory-making as an ethnographic subject in its own right. My focus is on one particular construct – the instrument, or relation of means to ends, that animates both legal and anthropological theories about property. An analysis of the workings of this construct leads to the conclusion that rather than critique the ends of legal knowledge, the anthropology of property should devote itself to articulating its own means.


Foreword: Accountability For International Crimes And Serious Violations Of Fundamental Human Rights, Madeline Morris, Karen Knop, Annelise Riles Dec 2014

Foreword: Accountability For International Crimes And Serious Violations Of Fundamental Human Rights, Madeline Morris, Karen Knop, Annelise Riles

Annelise Riles

No abstract provided.


Reforming Knowledge? A Socio-Legal Critique Of The Legal Education Reforms In Japan, Annelise Riles, Takashi Uchida Dec 2014

Reforming Knowledge? A Socio-Legal Critique Of The Legal Education Reforms In Japan, Annelise Riles, Takashi Uchida

Annelise Riles

This article critiques the current Japanese legal education reforms, modeled largely on the United States, by proposing a socio-technical framework for analyzing the distribution of legal expertise in a given society. On one side of the spectrum is the "monocentric" model of legal expertise, in which expertise is monopolized by the profession and legal literacy is low. On the other side of the spectrum is the "polycentric" model of legal expertise, in which a range of social and institutional actors share responsibility for legal expertise and legal literacy is high. If the U.S. is a more monocentric system, the Japanese …


Foreword: Transdisciplinary Conflicts Of Law, Ralf Michaels, Karen Knop, Annelise Riles Dec 2014

Foreword: Transdisciplinary Conflicts Of Law, Ralf Michaels, Karen Knop, Annelise Riles

Annelise Riles

This introduction to our co-edited special issue of Law and Contemporary Problems addresses how interdisciplinary studies might contribute to the revitalization of the field of Conflict of Laws. The introduction surveys existing approaches to interdisciplinarity in conflict of laws - drawn primarily from economics, political science, anthropology and sociology. It argues that most of these interdisciplinary efforts have remained internal to the law, relating conflicts to other legal spheres and issue areas. It summarizes some of the contributions of these projects but also outlines the ways they fall short of the full promise of interdisciplinary work in Conflicts scholarship, and …