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Notes
These quotes are subtitles in this chapter.
Darian-Smith, Eve (2010).
Renisa Mawani argues that too little attention is given to “law as an epistemological framework that has dramatically influenced and shaped our common understandings of secularity, religion, and race” (Renisa this issue). Clearly more nuanced attention should be given to the ordinary and the mundane, to issues of religious formation, distinction, and conversion inside and outside Christianity, as well as to various degrees of racism as they manifest in different spatial contexts over time. This more nuanced reading would also help locate the variety of racisms that Didi Herman points to with respect to attitudes towards Jews in England and elsewhere that ranged from explicit anti-semitism to varying levels of ambivalence (see Didi this issue, also Herman 2011). And a more nuanced reading of epistemological frames would speak to the different ways religious institutions and racist hierarchies and practices coalesced in the old and new worlds, and highlight why there exists different understandings of their overlap and distinction between contemporary Europeanists and Americanists (see Stolzenberg 2011). Together my reviewers’ comments suggest more work could be done by choosing alternative landmarks and by exploring the people and the conceptual conditions of their existence within the times and spaces in-between the landmarks I did choose as they developed on different sides of the Atlantic.
Breivak was also explicitly anti-feminist (see Jones 2011).
On the one hand, liberals blamed austerity measures, the closing of healthcare and community centers, and increasing unemployment and education costs that have led to a growing disaffection among the country’s youth. Liberals also pointed to the disproportionate impact of the recession on urban racial minorities. On the other hand, conservatives—including the UK Prime Minister David Cameron—blamed widespread lawlessness on inner-city subcultures and a “broken society” where “too many children grow up not knowing the difference between right and wrong”.
In the case of Britain, Arab democratic movements in countries participating in the Arab Spring found it an occasion to reprimand the West for its “lawlessness” and “uncivilized” behaviors, labels historically leveled at people living in the Middle East and Africa. See “For Egyptians, Riots in Britain Offer a Chance to Scold the West” New York Times 13 August 2011.
http://uk.reuters.com/article/2010/10/16/uk-germany-merkel-immigration-idUKTRE69F19T20101016. Retrieved 12 August 2011.
Cameron’s speech was immediately praised by Nick Griffin, chairman of the right-wing British National Party, and by Marine Le Pen, leader of France’s National Front whose political platform rests heavily on extreme nationalism and anti-immigration/anti-foreigner policies. See David Batty “Marine Le Pen praises Cameron stance on multiculturalism” (Guardian 10 February 2011).
The link between law and religion in all societies was recognized by Harold Berman years ago in a lecture he wrote in 1971:
we must start with an anthropological perspective on law and religion—a perspective which takes into account the fact that in all known cultures there has been an interaction of legal and religious values. In a sense everything is religion; and in a sense, everything is law—just as everything is time and everything is space. Man is everywhere and always confronting an unknown future, and for that he needs faith in a truth beyond himself, or else the community will decline, will decay, will fall backward. Similarly, man is everywhere and always confronting social conflict, and for that he needs legal institutions, or else the community will dissolve, will break apart. These two dimensions of life are in tension – yet neither can be fulfilled without the other. Law without faith degenerates into legalism; this indeed is what is happening today in many parts of America and the western world. Faith without law degenerates into religiosity. We must begin with these basic cross-cultural truths if we are to succeed in understanding what history requires of us here and now (Berman 1993, 20).
Diarmaid MacCulloch has argued, “western Christianity before 1500 must rank as one of the most intolerant religions in the world” (MacCulloch 2003: 676).
Personally, one of the reasons I wanted to write this book was to revisit some of the periods of history that I had encountered at university (ie Reformation history, Early English History), and reexamine assumptions taught to me in law school about the rationality and universality of western law. I was acutely aware that issues of racism had not featured at all in my education, while issues of religion had only featured when studying the pre-modern period. I felt that as both a student of history and a student of law I had somehow missed out on a much bigger story and I was keen to explore what it could be.
Didi raises the interesting issue of whether my being Australian with some cultural distance from both Britain and the United States allowed me in some way to think critically about Anglo-American law (Didi this issue). There may be something in this comment though I have lived in both places for years that together account for more than half my lifetime, and so I am not sure what role my nationality played beyond a general willingness to point out the shortcomings of colonialism and imperialism.
This quest to re-imagine is echoed in Jon’s reference to “mourning and hope” and his quoting of Nietzche who wrote of the need “to replace what has been lost, to recreate broken moulds” (Jon this issue).
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Goldberg-Hiller, J., Mawani, R., Herman, D. et al. Roundtable on Eve Darian-Smith, Religion, Race, Rights: Landmarks in the History of Modern Anglo-American Law. Fem Leg Stud 19, 265–288 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10691-011-9190-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10691-011-9190-5