Lawyers and Anthropologists

Ένα πολύ ενδιαφέρον και σημαντικό βιβλίο, για όλους τους νομικούς και όχι μόνο για εκείνους που ασχολούνται με το Συγκριτικό Δίκαιο ή/και την Ανθρωπολογία του Δικαίου, είναι το βιβλίο της:

Laura Nader, "The Life of the Law. Anthropological Projects", University of California Press, 2002


                  Δύο μικρά, ενδεικτικά του "πλούτου" του βιβλίου, αποσπάσματα, παραθέτω.

"The nineteenth century provides us with numerous distinguished lawyers - among them Sir Henry Maine, an Englishman; Lewis Henry Morgan, an American; J. F. McLennan, a Scotsman; and Johann Bachofen, from Switzerland - who worked with historical and comparative methods to develop a science of society. Although Morgan was the only one among them who was also a firsthand observer of indigenous peoples, there is hardly a history of anthropology that does not count these figures as forerunners in the field, while always, of course, making reference to but not including Friedrich Karl von Savigny, the German historical school of jurisprudence, and the Italian scholar Giambattista Vico. The nineteenth century was a turbulent period, a period when divisions between lawyers and anthropologists, between advocacy and objectivity, and between reform-minded and ivory tower scholarship had not yet established." (p. 76)

"And so, as we begin the twenty-first century, both lawyers and anthropologists are once again, as were their nineteenth-century forebears, concerned with global scale economics, with history, with power, with democracies and plutocracies, with contested domains, and with evangelical missions. The bottom may have fallen out of history in the nineteenth century, but twentieth-century legal scholars were still debating clashing notions of the rule of law in the nature of change; and the bottom may be falling out of law as we enter the twenty-first century. Indeed, one of Italy's distinguished comparative law experts, Professor Rodolfo Sacco ..., is entirely correct in urging a macrohistoric perspective, one that foes far beyond the recent past as found in legal history written as usual. Professor Sacco reminds us, as does the anthropological literature on law, of other legal traditions past and present, traditions in which the function - that is, the use - of law was precedent to any individual design. Law can exist and evolve without lawyers as soveriegn power, or even without the state. The state has not always existed, and various systems of law can and do coexist or compete." (p. 115-116)