Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2-18-2022
Abstract
My book Legal Orientalism: China, the United States, and Modern Law (Harvard University Press 2013) was published in translation in China in 2016. This essay analyzes the Chinese reception of this book. Originally addressed to a North American readership, Legal Orientalism examines critically the asymmetric relationship in which Euro-American law and Chinese law stand to one another, the former regarding itself as an embodiment of universal values while viewing the latter’s as culturally particular ones. The essay explores what happens when a “Western” work of self-criticism is transmitted to an “Eastern” audience. In this context, it analyzes the politics of self-Orientalism, Oriental legalism, and the comparative method.
Keywords
Comparative law, Chinese law, comparative method, politics of comparison, postcolonial theory, Chinese translation of Legal Orientalism, self-Orientalism, legal Orientalism, Oriental legalism
Publication Title
Ancilla Iuris
Repository Citation
Ruskola, Teemu, "A Reader’s Guide to Legal Orientalism" (2022). All Faculty Scholarship. 2821.
https://scholarship.law.upenn.edu/faculty_scholarship/2821
Included in
Asian Studies Commons, Chinese Studies Commons, Comparative and Foreign Law Commons, Comparative Politics Commons, Legal History Commons, Public Law and Legal Theory Commons, Race, Ethnicity and Post-Colonial Studies Commons
Publication Citation
Ancilla Iuris, 2021