Book contents
- Legal Barbarians
- Cambridge Studies in International and Comparative Law
- Legal Barbarians
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- The Legal Barbarians
- 1 The Legal Identity of the Global South
- 2 Comparative Instrumental Studies
- 3 Comparative Legislative Studies
- 4 Comparative Law as an Autonomous Discipline
- 5 The Critical Academic of Law
- Index
- Cambridge Studies in International and Comparative Law
3 - Comparative Legislative Studies
H.S. Maine, History, Progress, and the Comparative Method
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 August 2021
- Legal Barbarians
- Cambridge Studies in International and Comparative Law
- Legal Barbarians
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- The Legal Barbarians
- 1 The Legal Identity of the Global South
- 2 Comparative Instrumental Studies
- 3 Comparative Legislative Studies
- 4 Comparative Law as an Autonomous Discipline
- 5 The Critical Academic of Law
- Index
- Cambridge Studies in International and Comparative Law
Summary
The third chapter of the book analyzes the second moment in this genealogy of modern comparative law: comparative legislative studies. This second lapse in the construction of comparative law has its primary development in the nineteenth century. In this chapter, in particular, I examine Henry Summer Maine's work. The specialized literature recognizes him as another of the founding fathers of the discipline. The analysis of Maine's work revolves around three axes. In the first, the most important, I examine the concept of evolution as progress that the author is committed to. The historical method and the comparative method are the instruments that, for Maine, allow for describing and examining the legal and political evolution of humanity. For Maine, Europe is the locus of progress while India, as a paradigmatic representation of the Orient and of an undifferentiated "rest of the world," is the locus of barbarianism. The line that contains history is also occupied by a dual conceptual geography: on one hand, modern Indo-Europe and barbarian Indo-Europe, on the other, modern and barbarian Indo-Europe (that have a common culture) and the rest of the uncivilized world. In the narrative that Maine constructs, this spatial and temporal axis is also inhabited by particular subjectivities: the modern European, the Indian (as a representative of the oriental) and the individual from the savage rest of the world.
Keywords
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- Legal BarbariansIdentity, Modern Comparative Law and the Global South, pp. 70 - 99Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2021