"Foreword" [2019] ELECD 2823; in Corcodel, Veronica (ed), "Modern Law and Otherness" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2019) vi

Book Title: Modern Law and Otherness

Editor(s): Corcodel, Veronica

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

Section Title: Foreword

Number of pages: 2

Extract:

Foreword
Located within the exciting new field of comparative legal studies as interdis-
ciplinary critique, this book presents a genealogy of Western legal worldviews
as incarnated in comparative law since its first claim to scholarly recognition
through the work of Sir Henry Sumner Maine, writing from within the British
colonial administration in mid-nineteenth century India.
In this respect the critical tone is given by the use of the periodization of
contemporary legal history suggested by Duncan Kennedy in his seminal study
of law's several (three) globalizations. Thus, Veronica Corcodel identifies
within the visions of legal comparatists the same concerns and tensions appar-
ent in Kennedy's three successive modes of legal thought in various areas of
domestic substantive law. According to Corcodel's account, comparative legal
scholarship served, at its colonial start, a political vision of liberal imperialism,
moved to apologetic modernization during the era of the `social' and now,
most recently, with attendant ambivalences, purports to be transformative.
Her first critical move is thus to lay bare the signification of evolving legal
discourses and representations of the Other within or underlying successive
projects for ordering or classifying the legal world.
This genealogy highlights the rarely observed governance implications
of comparative legal thought, to the extent that it shows how the knowledge
produced through various classifications of laws and legal systems participates
very directly in non-coercive forms of domination. As the author rightly points
out, comparative law is overwhelmingly perceived as a descriptive exercise;
even when it ...