Author Interview: The Legal Barbarians

Daniel Bonilla Maldonado

Universidad de los Andes

Daniel Bonilla Maldonado, told us about his recently published book Legal Barbarians: Identity, Modern Comparative Law and the Global South (Cambridge University Press, 2021).

Tell us a little bit about the book

The book offers an unorthodox historical analysis of modern comparative law. It explores the connections between modern comparative law and the identity of the modern legal subject. Narratives created by modern comparative law shed light on the role played by law in the construction of modern individual and collective identities. More precisely, this study examines, first, the relationship between identity, law, and narrative. Second, it explores the moments of emergence and transformation of this area of law: instrumental comparative studies (Montesquieu), comparative legislative studies (Maine), and comparative law as an autonomous discipline (David, Zwiegert and Kötz). Finally, it analyses the theoretical perspectives that question the narrative created by modern comparative law: Third World Approaches to International Law, postcolonial studies of law, and critical comparative law. 

However, the importance of examining this field of law is not only theoretical. It is not merely useful for understanding abstract issues like the processes of construction of the modern legal “self” or the political economy of legal knowledge. It is also valuable for giving meaning to common contemporary legal and political processes. If we examine this area of legal scholarship and practice, we can understand, for example, why the law of the Global North is the criterion by which the laws of Global South countries are evaluated, why the law of the Global South is described as a minor iteration of the law of the Global North, why topography, temperament, and climate are still connected with the law and stability of political communities, and why the law of the Global South is understood as a marginal object of study in both the legal academia of the Global North and South. 

How would you explain the book’s origins, theoretical influences, and aims?

The Legal Barbarians arises from the interweaving of personal experiences with academic work. My experiences as a young law professor at a university in the Global South, my doctoral studies at a US university and my work as visiting professor at universities in the Global North intertwined to motivate my interest in how modern law constructs and is structured around a binary, codependent legal subject: the subject of law and the legal barbarian. In these three experiences, I perceived in simple and mundane ways that there were distinct types of subjects of legal knowledge, that these subjects did not all have the same value, and that these subjectivities were defined by a conceptual geography that related material spaces with richness in the production of legal knowledge. The experiences I've had in these three moments of my professional life led me to think that I should reflect more formally on their causes, characteristics, and effects. The questions that arose as a consequence of these experiences should be refined, connected, and addressed. These experiences were not idiosyncratic. My conversations with colleagues from the Global South over the years made it clear that such incidents were common in the relationship between legal academia of the Global North and South. 

The Legal Barbarians continues lines of analysis opened in previous publications (see e.g., Geopolítica Del Conocimiento Jurídico; Legal Clinics in the Global North and South: Between Equality and Subordination – An Essay; Introduction: Towards a Constitutionalism of the Global South; The Political Economy of Legal Knowledge in Action: Collaborative Projects in the Americas; The Political Economy of Legal Knowledge; The Mandarins of the Law: Pro Bono Legal Work from a Comparative Perspective; El trabajo jurídico pro bono en Brasil: Discurso, prácticas y límites). Nevertheless, the book focuses on an issue that those previous publications had only touched upon partially: comparative law. In the reflections that led to these publications, comparative law appeared recurrently. However, the precise objects of study of the writings ensured that the role this area of law played in the geopolitics of legal knowledge was not explored sufficiently. This book tries to deepen this line of analysis. Therefore, the book’s objective is to make explicit how comparative law constructs a central part of modern law and how this part is structurally tied to the construction of subjectivities, conceptual geographies, and forms of thinking about history that dominate the modern legal consciousness. The evaluations and alternative normative constructions come later. Understanding is a necessary condition for transformation. Three theoretical perspectives were particularly influential in achieving this aim: Paul Kahn’s cultural studies of law, Michel Foucault´s studies on the construction of the modern self and genealogy as a way of understanding and doing history, and Adriana Cavarero’s reflections on narrative and identity. 

What’s next?

Continuing with the lines of research opened by The Legal Barbarians and The Political Economy of Legal Knowledge, I am currently working on two projects. First, I am writing on the rights of nature. More precisely, I am exploring how the dialogue between legal systems of both the Global South and North has contributed to the creation of national and international concepts, rules, and principles related to the rights of nature. I am also exploring the processes of cross-fertilisation and legal pluralism connected to the rights of nature both from a national and an international law perspective. Second, I am examining the creation and exchange of legal knowledge from a normative perspective. The book that I am currently working on seeks to examine, within the framework of epistemic justice theory, the normative models that control the creation and exchange of legal knowledge. More precisely, the book aims to make explicit the set of rules and principles that normatively control the production and trade of legal knowledge, as well as their epistemic consequences. These sets of rules define, justify, and regulate the subjects that can create and exchange this type of commodity (legal knowledge), the geographies where these processes materialise, and the particular forms that the exchanges of legal products take in the modern legal and political world. Consequently, this book will examine two aspects of knowledge production, the liberal model of production and exchange of legal knowledge and the colonial model of legal knowledge creation. 

Daniel Bonilla is Professor of Law at Universidad de los Andes, Colombia.

‘Legal Barbarians: Identity, Modern Comparative Law and the Global South’ is available at https://www.cambridge.org/co/academic/subjects/law/public-international-law/legal-barbarians-identity-modern-comparative-law-and-global-south?format=HB.

Suggested Citation: Daniel Bonilla, ‘Author Interview: The Legal Barbarians’ IACL-AIDC Blog (31 March 2022) https://blog-iacl-aidc.org/just-published/2022/3/31/author-interview-the-legal-barbarians.