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China and the Death of American Comparative Law
14 March 2017 @ 12:00 – 14:00
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Das Law and Society-Institut der HU lädt herzlich ein zum Brown-Bag-Lunch mit Prof. Jed Kronke zum Thema
“China and the Death of American Comparative Law”
am 14 März 2017, 12-14h c.t., Raum 139a, 1. Stock Juristische Fakultät Bebelplatz
Jed Kronke ist Professor an der Fundacao Getulio Vargas in Sao Paulo und wird sein Buch “The Futility of Law and Development”, erschienen 2016 bei Oxford University Press, vorstellen. Nähere Informationen zu Vortrag und Referent unten.
Kaltgetränke sind vorhanden, InteressentInnen sind herzlich eingeladen, einen Mittagssnack mitzubringen.
Für eine kurze Anmeldung an michael.riegner@rewi.hu-
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The Law and Society Institute of HU invites you to a brown bag lunch with Prof. Jed Kronke on
“China and the Death of American Comparative Law”
14 March 2017, 12-14h c.t., Room 139a, 1 floor law faculty Bebelplatz
Jed Kronke is Professor at Fundacao Getulio Vargas in Sao Paulo and will introduce his book “The Futility of Law and Development”, published 2016 with OUP. More information on the talk, the book and the author is attached.
Cold drinks will be served, and guests are welcome to bring a lunch snack into the event.
Please briefly notify us of your attendance via e-mail to michael.riegner@rewi.hu-
Abstract: China and the Death of American Comparative Law
For all the attention paid to the Founder Fathers in contemporary American debates, it
has almost been wholly forgotten how deeply they embraced an ambitious and
intellectually profound valuation of foreign legal experience. Over the past two centuries,
America lost this foundational commitment to legal cosmopolitanism and developed a
contemporary legal culture both parochial in its resistance to engaging foreign legal
experience and universalist in its messianic desire to export American law abroad.
To date, the central role of Sino-American relations in this decline over has been
obscured, in large part due to the rise of the Chinese Communist Party in 1949. However,
American legal culture was significantly reshaped in the early 20th century as American
lawyer-missionaries helped inspire the first modern projects of American humanitarian
internationalism through legal development. The Sino-American relationship during this
era was a key crucible for this development, central to 19th century debates over
American imperialism and heightened by imagination of non-colonial Americanization
abroad in the wake of China’s 1911 Republican Revolution.
Drawing in transnational historical threads from religious, legal and diplomatic history,
the talk will explore how American comparative law ultimately was devolved and
marginalized as this new export-orientation gripped American legal culture. An argument
will be presented that the loss of the early virtues of American cosmopolitanism warped,
and continues to warp, American engagement with China while comprising a serious
global challenge to American legal culture and its capacity for legal innovation in the
face of an increasingly competitive and multi-polar 21st century.
Speaker:
Jedidiah Joseph Kroncke earned a B.A. in Asian Studies and Legal Studies from the
University of California Berkeley, a J.D. from Yale Law School, and a Ph.D. in Social
and Cultural Anthropology also from the University of California, Berkeley. After
graduate school, he was awarded the Oscar M. Ruebhausen Fellowship at Yale Law
School, the Samuel I. Golieb Fellowship in Legal History at NYU Law School and the
Raoul Berger Legal History Fellowship at Harvard Law School. Prior to his appointment
at FGV Sao Paulo Law, Professor Kroncke served as Senior Fellow at the East Asian
Legal Studies Program at Harvard Law School. He has published historical and
comparative articles on legal transplantation, constitutional formation, labor and property
rights, global development discourse, employee ownership and human capital
development. His recent book, The Futility of Law and Development: China and the
Dangers of Exporting American Law, was published by Oxford University Press and
examines the historical role of US-China relations in the formation of modern American
legal internationalism and the decline of American legal comparativism. His current
projects focus on transnational histories of legal education and the relationship of law to
economic democracy, as expressed in alternative labor and property institutions.