ARTICLE: Prof. George Emile Bisharat on Anthropology and Law as Two Sibling Rivals

Prof. George Emile Bisharat of University of California Hastings College of the Law on Anthropology and Law as Two Sibling Rivals

 

Abstract: 

 

This lecture discusses the relationship between two academic disciplines, law and anthropology, and suggests that the optimal relationship is, on the one hand, competitive and conflictual, and on the other hand, mutually respectful and supportive — something like the relationship between two sibling rivals. The conflictual aspects of this relationship derive from the different orientations of the two fields — instrumental for law, speculative for anthropology — and the fact that anthropology, based on long-term ethnography, often challenges and subverts law’s claims to distinctive authority. The positive aspects of the relationship build on the possibilities that each field can genuinely assist the other, as anthropological understanding can be extremely useful to lawyers, while lawyers are often the legal system’s most astute observers and critics, and thus can provide anthropologists with invaluable insights into the actual operations of legal systems. These points are illustrated through references to the author’s fieldwork in Palestine and legal practice experience in the United States.

ARTICLE: Sir Geoffrey Palmer QC on The hazard of making Constitutions: some Reflections on Comparative Constitutional Law

The Hazard of making constitutions: some reflections on Comparative Constitutional Law

Roles and Perspectives in New Zealand Law: Essays in Honour of Sir Ivor Richardson, David Carter and Matthew Palmer, eds., 2002 (Victoria University of wellington Legal Research Paper Series Palmer Paper No. 4) by Geoffrey Palmer QC, Victoria University of Wellington
Email: geoffrey.palmer@vuw.ac.nz 

Abstract:

The organisers of this Conference invited the author to contribute a paper on making constitutions, which drew on his perspectives as a lawyer, academic, and former politician. A number of the observations flow from his experience practicing exclusively in the field of public law, of dealing with governments on a variety of issues on behalf of clients and seeing, on a daily basis, the subtleties, complexities, and mutations that occur constantly within the New Zealand system of government. The second strand of the paper comes from teaching comparative constitutional law in the United States of America, concentrating upon a comparison of the Westminster system and congressional government, or in the more modern characterisation, presidential government as practised in the United States. The degree of suspicion of State power and the manner in which it is exercised is one of the eternal themes of constitutional law in all countries. There are some wonderful harmonies and dissonances between the United States system and the Westminster system. These two systems are the competing model for emerging nations to emulate, at least to some degree, when approaching the task of constitution building.

The paper considers matters such as superior law constitutions, constitutional protection of fundamental rights, constitutional design, and different constitutional examples in the South Pacific. Outcomes do not necessarily flow from constitutional structures, but what they do result from is frequently a mixture of so many variables of such complexity that they cannot be effectively calculated. Economic factors, resources, geography, demography, and history are all likely to be as influential in shaping outcomes as a constitution. Law is a subset of the social system. Social and political conditions determine the law, particularly constitutional law, rather than the other way around. But New Zealand could do with some self-reflective comparison. A comparative perspective may be one way of distancing ourselves from our own dominant legal consciousness. If comparative constitutional law does anything, it forces the analyst to think more deeply about his or her own domestic orthodoxies.