Recent Publications

From Masters of Slaves to Lords of Lands: The Transformation of Ownership in the Western World

James Q. Whitman

James Q. Whitman, Cambridge University Press (November 2024-online, print forthcoming) Today we think of land as the paradigmatic example of property, while in the past, the paradigmatic example was often a slave. In this seminal work, James Q. Whitman asserts that there is no natural form of ownership. Read More

Trials of Sovereignty: Mercy, Violence, and the Making of Criminal Law in British India, 1857–1922

Alastair McClure

Alastair McClure, Cambridge University Press (November 2024) Trials of Sovereignty offers the first legal history of mercy and discretion in nineteenth and twentieth-century India. Through a study of large-scale amnesties, the prerogative powers of pardon, executive commutation, and judicial sentencing practices, Alastair McClure argues that discretion represented a vital facet of colonial rule. Read More