Liberia and the Dialectic of Law

Chalmers, Shane

doi:10.4324/9781351000277

Cited by 3 publications

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“…69 displaced from the reform narrative is the historical irony that the 1847 national constitution, written by an American professor at harvard, Simon Greenleaf, degraded and alienated indigenous Liberians from their own native land while touting the American notion of liberty for the mulatto settlers. 70 In neighbouring Sierra Leone, the history of the modern state as a product of the antislave trade movement and British colonialism was also dislodged from the reconstruction plan. Sierra Leone's capital Freetown was 'purchased' from indigenous rulers in 1787 to resettle slaves who were to be deported from North America or recaptured on the high seas, following the abolition of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade.…”

Section: Reinstating the Postcolonial Statementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Although law is often contested, it 'is at the epicentre of a colonising power that makes subjects into living dead through acts of sovereign expression' , as Chalmers notes in her study of Liberia's Central Prison system. 97 What these communities are witnessing is capitalist law 'with a repertoire of language, of legal forms, institutional practices' that prioritise the concept of market and contract as the basis for a stable socioeconomic order. 98 one study in Liberia noted that concession negotiations often 'prioritise the government's claim to land ownership over the customary land tenure of indigenous communities' .…”

Section: Post-conflict Law State and Capitalmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Promotion of the rule of law: reinforcing domination through the internationalisation of legal norms

Sesay

2020

Third World Quarterly

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Focussing on the relationship between legal colonisation and legal globalisation in the context of post-conflict peacebuilding and reconstruction, I argue that promotion of the rule of law as social domination over local economies, politics and societies has been, historically, core to international efforts. Legal and judicial reforms, which are designed to restore and strengthen the post-conflict state, not only serve to obfuscate historical conditions associated with settler-colonial rule but also reconstitute the relationship between dominant domestic actors and global capital. Moreover, whereas rule-of-law promotion has increasingly been professionalised and standardised, the underlying objectives to promote neoliberal economic growth, subordinate indigenous legal systems, and advancing ruling interests remain the enduring legacies of legal colonialism. In making this argument, I interrogate the underlying ideological and political drivers of the UK-supported justice sector development in Sierra Leone and the US-funded rule-oflaw programmes in Liberia.

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Section: Reinstating the Postcolonial Statementioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Post-conflict Law State and Capitalmentioning

confidence: 99%

Promotion of the rule of law: reinforcing domination through the internationalisation of legal norms

Sesay

2020

Third World Quarterly

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The Mythology of International Rule-of-Law Promotion

Chalmers¹

2019

Law Soc. Inq.

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In 1992 Peter Fitzpatrick published The Mythology of Modern Law, a work that exposed the constitutive relation between Europe’s racialized imperialism and its conception of modern law. In the three decades since, a renewed field of “law and development” has grown, this time in the name of “the rule of law.” This Article shows how the mythology of modern law endures in this field of rule-of-law development. To do this, Part I draws out the main threads from Mythology. These are then woven through the Article, beginning with the World Justice Project’s Rule of Law Index®, before turning to the United Nations’ rule-of-law assistance, and ending with the World Bank’s 2017 World Development Report. The analysis shows how the mythology of modern law, in its racialized imperial form, is integral to the work of international rule-of-law promotion. One consequence is the denial of “local” law by a rule of law that obtains its authority by purporting to be responsive to legal pluralism. But the Article also points to the mythological possibilities of decolonization, specifically the possibilities of a “mythological legal pluralism” that is attentive to the ways in which the world’s plurality of laws already rule.

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Ultimate conversation: Fitzpatrick at Warwick, February 2020

Paliwala

2021

International Journal of Law in Context

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This is the edited transcript of a seminar on 27 February 2020 organised at Warwick Law School in appreciation of the work of Peter Fitzpatrick. Peter was seriously ill at the time but was desirous of online participation. Sadly, the seminar was the last public performance by Peter prior to his death. A variety of themes in Peter's work are discussed, including his critique of H.L.A. Hart, his notion of ‘slow reading’, the relationship between theory and grounded engagement with people, the idea of community and relationality, the role of the critic, self-criticism, the impossibility of law, decoloniality, occidentalism, mythologies and governmentality, and the significance of narratives.

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Liberia and the Dialectic of Law

Cited by 3 publications

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Promotion of the rule of law: reinforcing domination through the internationalisation of legal norms

Promotion of the rule of law: reinforcing domination through the internationalisation of legal norms

The Mythology of International Rule-of-Law Promotion

Ultimate conversation: Fitzpatrick at Warwick, February 2020

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