Law after empire: Channels and carriers of legal knowledge in the post-colonial

Salvatore Caserta

doi:10.35295/osls.iisl.2651

Authors

Salvatore Caserta iCourts, the Centre of Excellence for International Courts, Faculty of Law, University of Copenhagen

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.35295/osls.iisl.2651

Keywords:

Law in the post-colonial, sociology of law

Abstract

This paper examines how legal knowledge circulates in post-colonial contexts, arguing that the authority of law after empire is produced through the movement of people, institutions, and epistemic practices along old and new imperial routes. Drawing on comparative research on three regional courts, the Caribbean Court of Justice, the now-defunct Central American Court of Justice, and the East African Court of Justice, it reframes post-colonial legality not as a story of transplantation or dependency, but as a process of circulation and translation. Building on Bourdieu’s field theory, read through its own colonial origins, it defines the post-colonial legal field structurally rather than chronologically, as a field whose hierarchy of legitimacy still points to an external centre, and proposes an analytical triad, channels, carriers, and mobility, to explain how legal forms acquire legitimacy as they travel. Regional courts are the privileged site of analysis because they are where these channels converge and where translation becomes both visible and authoritative. Across the three regions, law’s imperial afterlife is not a tale of rupture but of selective re-appropriation: imperial legal forms endure, but their meanings are continually re-negotiated by the actors who carry them.

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Author Biography

Salvatore Caserta, iCourts, the Centre of Excellence for International Courts, Faculty of Law, University of Copenhagen

Associate Professor at iCourts, the Centre of Excellence for International Courts, Faculty of Law, University of Copenhagen. Karen Blixens Plads 16, 2300, Copenhagen S. Email: salvatore.caserta@jur.ku.dk

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