Although postcolonialism is now the main mode in which the West's relation to the "other" is critically explored, and although law has been at the forefront of that very relation, a thorough engagement between law and postcolonialism has not been pursued, in part because this would drastically disrupt not just the persistent orthodoxy of law and development but also the newly settled consensus around legal globalization and international human rights discourse. These essays break new ground in using the ideas of postcolonialism in a critical analysis of the current consensus on the...

Hussain analyses the uses and the history of a range of emergency powers, such as the suspension of habeas corpus and the use of military tribunals. His study focuses on British colonialism in India from the late eighteenth to the early twentieth century to demonstrate how questions of law and emergency shaped colonial rule, which in turn affected the place of colonialism in modern law, depicting the colonies not as passive recipients but as agents in the interpretation and delineation of Western ideas and practices.
Nasser Hussain is Professor of History at Amherst College.

The Holocaust, Corporations, and the Law explores the challenge posed by the Holocaust to legal and political thought by examining issues raised by the restitution class action suits brought against Swiss banks and German corporations before American federal courts in the 1990s. Although the suits were settled for unprecedented amounts of money, the defendants did not formally assume any legal responsibility. Thus, the lawsuits were bitterly criticized by lawyers for betraying justice and by historians for distorting history.

Leora Bilsky argues class action litigation and...