Law after empire
Channels and carriers of legal knowledge in the post-colonial
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.35295/osls.iisl.2651Palabras clave:
El derecho en la era poscolonial, sociología del derechoResumen
Este artículo analiza cómo circula el conocimiento jurídico en contextos poscoloniales, y sostiene que la autoridad del derecho tras el imperio se genera a través del movimiento de personas, instituciones y prácticas epistémicas a lo largo de antiguas y nuevas rutas imperiales. Basándose en una investigación comparativa sobre tres tribunales regionales —el Tribunal de Justicia del Caribe, el ya desaparecido Tribunal de Justicia de Centroamérica y el Tribunal de Justicia de África Oriental—, replantea la legalidad poscolonial no como una historia de trasplante o dependencia, sino como un proceso de circulación y traducción. Partiendo de la teoría del campo de Bourdieu, interpretada a la luz de sus propios orígenes coloniales, define el campo jurídico poscolonial de manera estructural y no cronológica, como un campo cuya jerarquía de legitimidad sigue apuntando hacia un centro externo, y propone una tríada analítica —canales, vectores y movilidad— para explicar cómo las formas jurídicas adquieren legitimidad a medida que se desplazan. Los tribunales regionales constituyen el ámbito privilegiado de análisis, ya que es en ellos donde convergen estos canales y donde la traducción se hace visible y adquiere autoridad. En las tres regiones, la vida posterior del derecho imperial no es una historia de ruptura, sino de reapropiación selectiva: las formas jurídicas imperiales perduran, pero sus significados son renegociados continuamente por los actores que las transmiten.
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