Book Review: Folk Understanding: In the Shadow of the Common Law
| Date | 01 September 2000 |
| DOI | 10.1177/096466390000900309 |
| Published date | 01 September 2000 |
| Author | Piyal Haldar |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
REVIEW ARTICLE
FOLK UNDERSTANDING:
IN THE SHADOW OF THE
COMMON LAW
PIYAL HALDAR
Birkbeck College, London, UK
ANNE M. O. GRIFFITHS, In the Shadow of Marriage: Gender and Justice
in an African Community. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1997, 310 pp.,
$50.00 (cloth), $18.95 (pbk).
There goes the old man again with his shadow
IT WAS from Java in 1814 that Thomas Raffles announced the broad
policy regarding the application of law in the colonies of the Malay Archi-
pelago: ‘a judge shall be guided in his decisions by existing native laws and
ancient customs, provided the same be not decidedly at variance with the uni-
versal and acknowledged principles of natural justice’ (van den Burgh, 1994).
In one sense the dictate encapsulates one of the most commented on yet, in
many senses underanalysed, features of the place of western law in the former
colonies. Namely, that in spite of metropolitan sensibilities, colonial forms of
legality had, for different reasons, to exist alongside the pre-existing rituals
and traditions of customary law.
Raffles’ pronouncement also stipulates an exclusion clause in the contract
between the colonial and the colonized. Throughout the former British
Empire the laws and customs of locals were recognized and deemed valid.
Nevertheless, local custom could not supersede the principles of natural
justice laid down by the British. Resident customs and rituals associated
with the resolution of disputes were permissible in so far as they were not
repugnant to ‘universal’ values of humanity – principles that were deter-
mined, of course, according to the occidental standards of the colonizers.
While the principles of natural justice were, of course, vague, the idea that
SOCIAL &LEGAL STUDIES 0964 6639 (200009) 9:3 Copyright © 2000
SAGE Publications, London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi,
Vol. 9(3), 449–458; 013783
09 Haldar (jl/d) 3/8/00 1:51 pm Page 449
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