Présentation de l’éditeur

A compelling reexamination of how Britain used law to shape its empire

For many years, Britain tried to impose its own laws on the peoples it conquered, and English common law usually followed the Union Jack. But the common law became less common after Britain emerged from the Seven Years’ War (1754–63) as the world’s most powerful empire. At that point, imperial policymakers adopted a strategy of legal pluralism: some colonies remained under English law, while others, including parts of India and former French territories in North America, retained much of their previous legal regimes.

As legal historian Christian R. Burset argues, determining how much English law a colony received depended on what kind of colony Britain wanted to create. Policymakers thought English law could turn any territory into an anglicized, commercial colony; legal pluralism, in contrast, would ensure a colony’s economic and political subordination. Britain’s turn to legal pluralism thus reflected the victory of a new vision of empire—authoritarian, extractive, and tolerant—over more assimilationist and egalitarian alternatives. Among other implications, this helps explain American colonists’ reverence for the common law: it expressed and preserved their equal status in the empire. This book, the first empire-wide overview of law as an instrument of policy in the eighteenth-century British Empire, offers an imaginative rethinking of the relationship between tolerance and empire.

Christian R. Burset is Professor of Law at Notre Dame Law School. He lives in Chicago, IL, and South Bend, IN.

Présentation de l’éditeur

Le XVIIe siècle est frappé par une « crise des réfugiés » sans précédent. Fuyant les persécutions et les politiques coercitives, des centaines de milliers de personnes prennent la route de l’exil : judéo-ibériques, vaudois, protestants français, wallons ou tchèques, cherchent une protection matérielle et juridique dans plusieurs pays d’Europe. Or, le droit d’asile était jusqu'alors seulement conçu comme une immunité accordée à des délinquants ou à des criminels. Comment en faire un droit pour les personnes innocentes ?

S’appuyant sur des sources en partie inédites, cet ouvrage, à la croisée de l’histoire du droit et de l’histoire des émotions, s’interroge sur cette mutation profonde du droit d’asile. Les fugitifs dispersés dans plusieurs pays d’Europe forgent un langage de l’exil et élaborent la figure compassionnelle du réfugié. C’est sur elle que les juristes s’appuient pour penser un « droit des exilés ». Ce droit de recevoir des personnes vulnérables, qui s’ébauche dans l’Allemagne protestante, ouvre un chapitre inédit et transnational du droit des gens.

Naïma Ghermani est professeure d’histoire moderne à l’université de Grenoble-Alpes. Elle est l'auteure, avec Caroline Michel d’Annoville, d'Image et Droit. Du ius imaginis au droit à l’image (Éditions de l’École française de Rome, 2022).

Présentation de l’éditeur

La excepcionalidad como la nueva normalidad y las formas de dominio del presente.

El soberano está de nuevo entre nosotros. No siempre lo vemos pero está presente: encarnado en diferentes figuras, controla nuestra cotidianidad y aplica, incesante, una excepcionalidad permanente. Recuperando el lenguaje jurídico-militar del siglo XX y a medio camino entre la crónica y el ensayo, Gozalo Salellas actualiza el concepto de estado de excepción en las sociedades contemporáneas y desgrana los seis estados teleológicos y somáticos de los que el soberano se sirve actualmente. Reflexionar sobre su poder es entender mejor una condición clave de nuestro tiempo.

«Ignasi Gozalo Salellas describe con sucinta brillantez los años veinte del siglo XXI como una gavilla de “estados” presididos por la excepcionalidad: excepcionalidad institucional, tecnológica y emocional que aumenta todas nuestras vulnerabilidades al tiempo que erosiona el futuro democrático de la sociedad global» (Santiago Alba Rico).

«La excepcionalidad se ha normalizado y se ha infiltrado en todas las dimensiones de la vida. Vivimos en tiempos de emergencias que alimentan nuestros miedos. Este libro de Ignasi Gozalo Salellas es una invitación a reflexionar en vez de reaccionar, a comprender en vez de juzgar. Mediante un caleidoscopio de escenas vividas en estos tiempos recientes, desde la victoria de Trump y la pandemia al procés catalán o la crisis de salud mental de los jóvenes, consigue mostrar la densidad de un presente que va más allá de la dictadura de la actualidad» (Marina Garcés).

Présentation de l’éditeur

This edited volume takes a multidisciplinary look at the philosophical concept of a priori. Placing social sciences at the heart of the discussion, this book establishes a dialogue between various disciplines and the different postulates, presuppositions, prejudices, paradigms, beliefs, commonplaces, biases or emotions that forge their theoretical and practical constructs.

The book is divided into three parts. Chapters in Part I lay the foundations of a new antecedent approach that revisits the classical approach to a priori and its relationships with law and philosophy. Chapters in Part II extend the analysis to economics and management, on such key topics as blockchain technology, labor, health insurance and innovation. Finally, chapters in Part III turn to anthropology and sociology, to reconsider the core methods of these different disciplines and to nourish reflection on the basis of new working hypotheses.

Sommaire

Law, Philosophy

Toward a New Antecedent Legal Method, Jean-Sylvestre Bergé

The Cultural Dimension of Law, Frédéric Zenati-Castaing

Is Legal Knowledge a Knowledge of Object?, Michel Boudot

Antecedent and Ontology: In Search of the Smallest Possible A Priori, Frédéric Rouvière

The Private/Public Divide Among the Principles of World-Building: Insights from Godelier, Fortes, and Arendt, Lior Barshack

The A Priori: A Structure of an Ascendant Imaginary, Hania Kassoul

Are Numbers A Priori Like any Other?, Mathieu Corteel

Economics, Management

Antecedents in Labor Economics, Jean-Luc Gaffard

Blockchain: Antecedents and Future Challenges, Martin Cimiterra, Jackie Krafft

A Priori to Investigate Innovation in Management Science, Cécile Ayerbe

Anthropology, Sociology

Not Having an A Priori Has Become the Anthropological A Priori: Multiple Forms of Knowledge Are Produced in Ethnographic Experiments, Ana Lúcia Pastore Schritzmeyer

The Investigation as an Antecedent in Sociology and Other A Priori, Gérald Gaglio