ABSTRACT
Taking as his point of departure the recent renewal of interest in ‘empire’ as a code through which to understand the contemporary global legal and political configuration, Jim Tully offers an arresting analysis of the limitations inherent in the majority of theoretical expressions of this new wave. For many in the mainstream of public law, international law or the burgeoning field of ‘law and globalization’ studies, talk of empire in the same breath as contemporary law may seem anachronistic, distorting, even gratuitously provocative. But Tully’s critique comes from the opposite direction. His basic thesis is that, far from making exaggerated claims about law’s imperial character, most understandings of the contemporary relevance of empire, and of empire’s law, are euphemistic. They neglect one or more of empire’s key dimensions, and in so doing understate its scope and depth and underestimate what a successful strategy and process of de-imperialisation would require. His message, then, is offered not just as a critique of those positions that would celebrate the present global structure. It also poses a challenge to those many who would consider themselves to be keen critics of the status quo, but who, on our author’s analysis, do not go far enough.
