Parker reviews Esmeir, "Juridical Humanity"

JOTWELL's Legal History Section has posted new material: Kunal Parker (University of Miami School of Law) reviews Samera Esmeir, Juridical Humanity: A Colonial History (Stanford University Press, 2012) (a book we mentioned not too long ago, here). Here's the first paragraph of the review:

Samera Esmeir’s ambitious book, Juridical Humanity: A Colonial History, explores the legal transformation of British-ruled Egypt between the 1880s and the 1930s. With news from Egypt the subject of daily headlines, the book is timely and important. However, it is Esmeir’s innovative treatment of her subject that truly makes this book deserving of the widest readership. In contradistinction to a powerful tradition of writing about colonialism, Esmeir sees in the legal colonization of Egypt not the occlusion of Egyptians’ intrinsic humanity, but instead the instantiation of “humanity” as the object of colonial law’s solicitude. This is the “juridical humanity” of the book’s title.

Read on here.