Religion, Race, Rights : Landmarks in the History of Modern Anglo-American Law

The book highlights the interconnections between three framing concepts in the development of modern western law: religion, race, and rights. The author challenges the assumption that law is an objective, rational and secular enterprise by showing that the rule of law is historically grounded and linked to the particularities of Christian morality, the forces of capitalism dependent upon exploitation of minorities, and specific conceptions of individualism that surfaced with the Reformation in the sixteenth century, and rapidly developed in the Enlightenment in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Drawing upon landmark legal decisions and historical events, the book emphasizes that justice is not blind because our concept of justice changes over time and is linked to economic power, social values, and moral sensibilities that are neither universal nor apolitical. Highlighting the historical interconnections between religion, race and rights aids our understanding of contemporary socio-legal issues. In the twenty-first century, the economic might of the USA and the west often leads toward a myopic vision of law and a belief in its universal application. This ignores the cultural specificity of western legal concepts, and prevents us from appreciating that, analogous to past colonial periods, in a global political economy Anglo-American law is not always transportable, transferable, or translatable across political landscapes and religious communities. 'Darian-Smith's new book is an example of what is most exciting about new scholarship in the humanities. It works across disciplinary and methodological boundaries in its attempt to deal with one of our most pressing current social problems - determining the consequences of the sometimes violent interaction of race, religion and law in times of social crisis. Darian-Smith explodes the myth of secularism in modern society, and the illusion of post-racialism, in her unblinking analysis of present dilemmas. Once you r