Author
Prof Ralf Michaels
Organisation/Institution
Max Planck Institute for Comparative and International Private Law
Country
GERMANY
Panel
Law and Society
Title
The Place of Japan in Decolonial Comparative Law
Abstract
Comparative law has a colonial tradition. At least in part it emerged, like other comparative disciplines born or modernized in the 19th century, from racist attempts to separate and hierarchize societies, and as an instrument in the governance of colonial regimes. Decolonial law emerged as a research project to analyze this colonial tradition, its continuity today, and possible alternatives. (See) Inspired by decolonial theory, as formulated in Latin America and Africa, it focusses especially on relations between and among former European colonizers and their former colonies. But its aim goes further, both geographically and analytically. It emphasizes the necessary connection between modernity and coloniality, and the tensions between European universalism and the global pluriverse. What is the place of Japan in this endeavour? Japan is not a former colony, and yet it is a recipient of European law. Japan is not European and yet a former colonizer in Asia. Its adoption of European law emerged from a mix of admiration and hostility, and the laws it imposed on its Asian colonies were in part European in origin, in part representative of an alternative universalism called Pan-Asianism. In all these ways, Japan complicates the apparent dichotomy between colonizer and colonized, as it is both and neither at the same time, and thereby enriches decolonial comparative law. At the same time, decolonial comparative law holds valuable insights into the role of Japan in comparative law, between importer and exporter of law. The paper will look at both. Background L Salaymeh/R Michaels, Decolonial Comparative Law – A Conceptual Beginning (2022) 86 RabelsZ 166 R Michaels, How Asian Should Asian Law Be? In G Low (ed), Convergence and Divergence of of Private Law in Asia (2022) 227
Biography
Ralf Michaels is Director at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative and International Private Law in Hamburg, Germany, Chair in Global Law at Queen Mary University in London, and Professor of Law at Hamburg University. Until 2019 he was the Arthur Larson Professor at Duke University School of Law; he has also been a visiting professor at the Universities of Paris II Panthéon-Assas, Princeton, Pennsylvania, Toronto, and Tel Aviv, as well as the London School of Economics. Michaels holds an LL.M. from Cambridge University and a PhD in Law from Passau University. He is a widely published scholar of private international law, comparative law, and legal theory; his current research focuses on decolonial comparative law, regulatory conflicts, and theoretical foundations of private international law and global legal plurality. Michaels is a member of the Academia Europaea, the American Law Institute, the International Association of Comparative Law, and the Comparative Law Associations of the United States, Germany, and France. Ralf Michaels was Guest Professor at the Universities of Panthéon/Assas (Paris II), Princeton, Pennsylvania, Toronto, Tel Aviv and the London School of Economics; he was also Senior Fellow at Harvard Law School, Princeton University (Program in Law and Public Affairs) and the American Academy in Berlin. He is a titular member of the Académie internationale de droit comparé and a member of, among other entities, the American Law Institute, the Gesellschaft für Rechtsvergleichung (German Society for Comparative Law), the Deutschen Gesellschaft für Internationales Recht (German Society for International Law) and the Zivilrechtslehrervereinigung (Association of Professors in Private Law).
