Full Description
In colonial India and Mandatory Palestine, early-twentieth-century legal scholars made important contributions to the study of the nature of law, particularly by analyzing Hindu and Jewish law - their ancient religious systems. This book reconstructs the lives and ideas of these scholars, revealing a forgotten global wave of jurisprudential innovation that appeared across many territories in the non-Western world. The book challenges the view that non-Western legal scholars working in the colonies were passive recipients of Western ideas. It argues that Indian and Jewish thinkers used Western historical and sociological approaches to law to reimagine Hindu and Jewish law, and to assert their relevance to modern legal and constitutional debates. Though historical in scope, the story this book tells is also relevant to contemporary tensions between Western liberal law and non-Western religious legal traditions. This title is available as open access on Cambridge Core.
Contents
List of Figures; List of Tables; Acknowledgments; Note on Transliteration and Terminology; Introduction; Part I. Institutions and Works: 1. Legal Education and Legal Theory in Colonial India; 2. Legal Education and Legal Theory in Mandatory Palestine; Interlude 1: Goals; Part II. Individual Scholars: 3. The Life and Jurisprudential Ideas of Radhabinod Pal; 4. The Life and Jurisprudential Ideas of Samuel Eisenstadt; Interlude 2: Politics; Part III. Ancient Public Law: 5. The Hindu Polity Literature; 6. The Study of Ancient Jewish Public Law; Interlude 3: Impact; 7. Legal Education and Legal Theory in Egypt and China; Epilogue: The Decline and Resurgence of Legal Nationalism in Postcolonial India and Israel; Bibliography; Index.
