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The market and the family, the sacred and the secular in modern comparative law

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Abstract

This paper explores the operation of the distinctions between the market and the family, the sacred and the secular in Euro-American comparative legal scholarship. It contributes to existing debates by exploring the potential of the lenses of inclusion and exclusion to address the political implications of the two dichotomies. Starting from the observation that the two distinctions are often inseparable, since market law is constituted in opposition to religious family law, it puts emphasis on the ways in which the exclusionary dimension of such construction is produced. It also shows that exclusion stands in tension with comparative law’s own promise of inclusion. In this sense, the field is reducible neither to inclusion nor to exclusion, and yet it contains both. Capturing this ambivalence in the works of some of the most important Euro-American comparatists, the paper concludes with some tentative thoughts on a critical praxis of particularism.

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Notes

  1. See Janet Halley & Kerry Rittich, Critical Directions in Comparative Family Law: Genealogies and Contemporary Studies of Family Law Exceptionalism, 58 AMERICAN J. COMP. L. 753 (2010); Duncan Kennedy, Savigny’s Family/Patrimony Distinction and its Place in the Global Genealogy of Classical Legal Thought, 58 AMERICAN J. COMP. L. 811 (2010), Lama Abu-Odeh, The Politics of (Mis)Recognition: Islamic Law Pedagogy in American Academia, 52 AMERICAN J. COMP. L. 789 (2004).

  2. By imperialism, I mean broadly any processes, structures, and attitudes of domination over distant people and territories, carried out through formal state power and/or through “informal” means. See EDWARD SAID, CULTURE AND IMPERIALISM 9 (1993). For the distinction between “informal” and “formal” imperialism, see Martti Koskenniemi, Empire and International Law: The Real Spanish Contribution, 61 UNIV. TORONTO L. J. 1 (2011).

  3. Peter Fitzpatrick & Eve-Darian Smith, Laws of the Postcolonial: An Insistent Introduction, in LAWS OF THE POSTCOLONIAL (Peter Fitzpatrick & Eve-Darian Smith eds., 1999); Sundhya Pahuja, The Postcoloniality of International Law, 46 HARV. INT’L. L. J. 459 (2005).

  4. Id.

  5. This has been a central theme in the Third World Approaches to International Law scholarship, whose members share a common concern over the relationship between imperialism and international law. For an introduction to TWAIL scholarship and a bibliography, see James Thuo Gathii, TWAIL: A Brief History of its Origins, its Decentralized Network, and a Tentative Bibliography, 3(1) TRADE L. & DEV. 26 (2011).

  6. TEEMU RUSKOLA, LEGAL ORIENTALISM, CHINA, THE UNITED STATES AND MODERN LAW 54–6 (2013).

  7. Id.

  8. For a similar distinction between claim and promise in the field of international law, see SUNDHYA PAHUJA, DECOLONISING INTERNATIONAL LAW: DEVELOPMENT, ECONOMIC GROWTH AND THE POLITICS OF UNIVERSALITY 250 (2011). Pahuja argues that the idea of inclusion in international law is best understood as a promise and that of exclusion as a claim. In this sense, she notes that post-war Third World attempts “to capture the potential offered by the universal promise of international law… have been subsumed by a rationality that works in terms of a universal claim.”

  9. Halley & Rittich, supra note 1, at 771.

  10. HENRY SUMNER MAINE, ANCIENT LAW, ITS CONNECTION WITH THE EARLY HISTORY OF SOCIETY AND ITS RELATION TO MODERN IDEAS 21, 90–1 (1908). See also HENRY SUMNER MAINE, LECTURES ON THE EARLY HISTORY OF INSTITUTIONS 398–400 (1888). On Maine’s scholarship, see Veronica Corcodel, The Governance Implications of Comparative Legal Thinking: On Henry Maine’s Jurisprudence and Liberal Imperialism, in PRIVATE INTERNATIONAL LAW AND GLOBAL GOVERNANCE 92 (Horatia Muir Watt & Diego P. Fernandez Arroyo eds., 2014).

  11. MAINE, supra note 10, at 90–1.

  12. Id., at 242.

  13. Duncan Kennedy, Three Globalizations of Law and Legal Thought, 1850–2000, in THE NEW LAW AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT: A CRITICAL APPRAISAL 19 (ed., 2006).

  14. Koskenniemi, supra note 2, at 1.

  15. HENRY SUMNER MAINE, VILLAGE-COMMUNITIES OF THE EAST AND WEST 109 (1876).

  16. MAINE, supra note 10, at 21.

  17. MAINE, supra note 15, at 52.

  18. MAINE, supra note 10 at 18, 24.

  19. MAINE, supra note 15, at 20.

  20. Id., at 36–44, 76.

  21. Id., at 32.

  22. Id.

  23. Id., at 121.

  24. Id., at 32–3.

  25. Id., at 72.

  26. Id., at 104.

  27. KARUNA MANTENA, ALIBIS OF EMPIRE: HENRY MAINE AND THE ENDS OF LIBERAL IMPERIALISM 139 (2009).

  28. HENRY SUMNER MAINE, LECTURES ON THE EARLY HISTORY OF INSTITUTIONS 72–3 (1888).

  29. MAINE, supra note 15, at 299–300. Maine add that:

    “the truth is the natives of India are not so wedded to their usages that they are not ready to surrender them for any tangible advantage, and in this case the even justice of these courts was evidently regarded as quite making up for the strangeness of the principles upon which they acted” [emphasis added].

  30. Id., at 26.

  31. Id., at 73.

  32. Id., at 105–6, 153–5.

  33. Id., at 40–1.

  34. Id., at 153–4.

  35. Id., at 105–6.

  36. Id., at 113.

  37. EDOUARD LAMBERT, LA FONCTION DU DROIT CIVIL COMPARÉ 387–8 (1903).

  38. Id., at 386.

  39. Id., at 373, 377–8.

  40. Id., at 350.

  41. Id., at 354.

  42. Id., at 360.

  43. Id., at 349–50.

  44. 3 ROSCOE POUND, JURISPRUDENCE, THE SCOPE AND SUBJECT MATTER OF LAW: SOURCES, FORMS, MODES OF GROWTH, 132–3, 144 (1959). Pound notes that some forms of individual property were given however exceptional recognition.

  45. Id., at 177–8, 143–6. Pound puts forward two main ideas governing the Hindu understanding of succession: “the corporate character of the group of kindred” and “ancestor worship.”

  46. Id., at 132–3, 177, 144.

  47. 1 ROSCOE POUND, JURISPRUDENCE. THE END OF LAW 35 (1959).

  48. 3 POUND, supra note 44, at 448. On the beginnings of “scientific treatment” of Mohammedan law. See 1 POUND, supra note 47, at 31.

  49. 3 POUND, supra note 44, at 419.

  50. Id., at 419. For Pound, only in India did case law start to develop.

  51. LAMBERT, supra note 37, at 211.

  52. Id., at 214.

  53. On the less developed character of individualism, see Edouard Lambert, Introduction, in LA DOCTRINE MUSULMANE DE L’ABUS DES DROITS. TRAVAUX DU SÉMINAIRE ORIENTAL D’ÉTUDES JURIDIQUES ET SOCIALES XXII (Mahmoud Fathy ed., 1913).

  54. On Lambert’s social legal project, see EDOUARD LAMBERT, LA FONCTION 12, 42, 850–1, 907–11 (1866).

  55. ROSCOE POUND, AN INTRODUCTION TO THE PHILOSOPHY OF LAW 65–7, 71 (1999); 1 POUND, supra note 47 at 503.

  56. 1 POUND, supra note 47 at 506, 52–7.

  57. Id., at 431–2, 536–7. POUND, supra note 55, at 73.

  58. Pound also contemplated a sixth stage of evolution, that of universal law. 1 POUND, supra note 47, at 433–56.

  59. 1 POUND, supra note 47, at 51. See also 2 ROSCOE POUND, JURISPRUDENCE, THE NATURE OF LAW 43 (1959).

  60. 1 POUND, supra note 47, at 369, 381.

  61. Lambert, supra note 53, at VI–VII.

  62. EDOUARD LAMBERT, FRANCE AND EDUCATION IN EGYPT, LE TEMPS (1907). See also Amr Shalakany, The Origins of Comparative Law in the Arab World, or How Sometimes Losing Your Asalah Can be Good For You, in RETHINKING THE MASTERS OF COMPARATIVE LAW 152 (Annelise Riles ed., 2001).

  63. Id.

  64. Id.

  65. See Roscoe Pound, The Chinese Civil Code in Action, 29 TULANE L. REV. 277, 287 (1954–5); Roscoe Pound, The Chinese Constitution, 22 N.Y. U. L. Q. REV. 194, 196, 199 (1947).

  66. Roscoe Pound, Comparative Law and History as Bases for Chinese Law, 61 HARV. L. REV. 749, 757 (1947–8).

  67. Id., at 753.

  68. David Kennedy, The Methods and the Politics, in COMPARATIVE LEGAL STUDIES: TRADITIONS AND TRANSITIONS 345 (Pierre Legrand & Roderick Munday eds., 2003).

  69. See RENÉ DAVID & JOHN E.C. BRIERLEY, MAJOR LEGAL SYSTEMS OF THE WORLD TODAY: AN INTRODUCTION TO THE COMPARATIVE STUDY OF LAW 12 (1985); RUDOLF B. SCHLESINGER, FORMATION OF CONTRACTS: A STUDY OF THE COMMON CORE OF LEGAL SYSTEMS CONDUCTED UNDER THE AUSPICES OF THE GENERAL PRINCIPLES OF LAW PROJECT OF THE CORNELL LAW SCHOOL (1968); KONRAD ZWEIGERT & HEIN KÖTZ, AN INTRODUCTION TO COMPARATIVE LAW 4, 15 (1998).

  70. RUDOLF B. SCHLESINGER, COMPARATIVE LAW: CASES, TEXT, MATERIALS 308–9 (1960); SCHLESINGER supra note 69, at 32–3, Rudolf B. Schlesinger, The Common Core of Legal Systems: An Emerging Subject of Comparative Study in XXth Century Comparative and Conflicts Law, in LEGAL ESSAYS IN HONOR OF HESSEL E. YNTEMA (Arthur T. Von Mehren et al. eds., 1961); DAVID & BRIERLEY, supra note 69, at 81, 474; ZWEIGERT & KÖTZ, supra note 69, at 40, 45.

  71. RENÉ DAVID, TRAITÉ ÉLÉMENTAIRE DE DROIT CIVIL COMPARÉ: INTRODUCTION À L'ÉTUDE DES DROITS ÉTRANGERS ET À LA MÉTHODE COMPARATIVE, 152–8 (1950). See also Jorge L. Esquirol, The Fictions of Latin American Law (Part I), 2 UTAH L. REV. 425, 450 (1997).

  72. DAVID & BRIERLEY, supra note 69, at 473, 484.

  73. Id., at 473.

  74. Id., at 455.

  75. Id., at 481–2.

  76. Id., at 475.

  77. Id.

  78. Id., at 474.

  79. Id., at 460–5. For David, Islamic law’s ability to evolve came to an end in the tenth century, when its development through legal scholarship came to be perceived as completed.

  80. Id., at 472.

  81. Id., at 492.

  82. Id., at 489.

  83. Id.

  84. Id., at 490, 499.

  85. Id., at 500.

  86. Id.

  87. ZWEIGERT & KÖTZ, supra note 69, at 304. For them, Islamic scholars were forbidden to adopt independent opinions on the basis of the Koran and the Sunna from about the ninth century.

  88. Id., at 309.

  89. Id., at 113.

  90. Id., at 113, 311.

  91. Id., at 317–8, 225.

  92. Id., at 315.

  93. Id., at 315, 318–9.

  94. SCHLESINGER, supra note 69 at 308, 316.

  95. Id., at 68.

  96. Id., at 309.

  97. Id., at 309.

  98. SCHLESINGER, supra note 70, at 290–3, 608–9.

  99. Id., at 827–36.

  100. DAVID & BRIERLEY, supra note 69, at 24.

  101. SCHLESINGER, supra note 70, at 290–93, 608–9.

  102. SCHLESINGER, supra note 69, at 3.

  103. ZWEIGERT & KÖTZ, supra note 69, at 299–300.

  104. For critiques of evolutionary thinking, see ZWEIGERT & KÖTZ, supra note 69 at 9, DAVID & BRIERLEY, supra note 69, at 4–5. Ideas of modernization and economic development are especially visible in these comparatists’ representations of Hindu and Islamic laws.

  105. René David, L’originalité des droits de l’Amérique Latine, in LE DROIT COMPARÉ, DROITS D’HIER, DROITS DE DEMAIN 161, 162 (1983); SCHLESINGER, supra note 69, at 827–36; ZWEIGERT & KÖTZ, supra note 69, at 282–9.

  106. DAVID, supra note 71, at 38–9, 59–75.

  107. Id., at 66–7.

  108. Id.

  109. DAVID & BRIERLEY, supra note 69, at 495.

  110. DAVID, supra note 71, at 67.

  111. ZWEIGERT & KÖTZ, supra note 69, at 49.

  112. SCHLESINGER, supra note 69, at 828.

  113. For a similar claim in relation to transnational liberal feminist projects, see Cyra Akila Choudhury, Empowerment or Estrangement? Liberal Feminism’s Visions of the “Progress” of Muslim Women, 39(2) UNIV. BALTIMORE L. F. 153 (2009).

  114. See Halley & Rittich, supra note 1.

  115. SAID, supra note 2, at 66, 188.

  116. Sundhya Pahuja, supra note 3, at 461.

  117. RUSKOLA, supra note 6, at 38.

  118. Koskenniemi, supra note 2, at 1.

  119. John Gallagher & Ronald Robinson, The Imperialism of Free Trade, 6(1) ECON. HIST’Y REV. 1, 13 (1953). In this sense, it was in reaction to the failures of economic imperialism that European powers turned to formal rule during the nineteenth century. Direct annexation of territories was to be undertaken as an investment risk only when control by “informal” means failed for various reasons.

  120. Id., at 7. See also KARL POLANYI, THE GREAT TRANSFORMATION: THE POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ORIGINS OF OUR TIME 145–8, 156 (2001).

  121. Michael Fakhri, Law as Interplay of Ideas, Institutions and Interests: Using Polanyi (and Foucault) to Ask TWAIL Questions, 10 INT’L. COMM’Y. L. REV. 455, 463 (2008). To be sure, such ideas and institutions are not understood in this paper as inherently legitimating imperialism, but as a necessary legal foundation of imperial relationships.

  122. RUSKOLA, supra note 6, at 54.

  123. Among these scholars are Jorge L. Esquirol, The Fictions of Latin American Law (Part I), 2 UTAH L. REV. 425 (1997); Duncan Kennedy, Political ideology and Comparative Law, in CAMBRIDGE COMPANION TO COMPARATIVE LAW 35 (ed., 2012); Kennedy, supra note 68; Amr Shalakany, supra note 62; Günter Frankenberg, Critical Comparisons: Re-thinking Comparative Law, 26(2) HARV. INT’L. L. J. 411 (1985); Halley & Rittich, supra note 1, at 771; RUSKOLA, supra note 6.

  124. See also Amr Shalakany, supra note 62, at 154.

  125. For an introduction to TWAIL scholarship and a bibliography, see Gathii, supra note 5, at 26.

  126. For a similar idea of translation of comparative law into public international law, see RUSKOLA, supra note 6, at 10.

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    Veronica Corcodel

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Veronica Corcodel—Postdoctoral Fellow at Sciences Po Paris.

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Corcodel, V. The market and the family, the sacred and the secular in modern comparative law. Jindal Global Law Review 7, 9–29 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s41020-016-0023-x

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