THE “THREE GLOBALIZATIONS” IN LATIN AMERICA

Abstract

Duncan Kennedy’s “The Three Globalizations of Law and Legal Thought: 1850-2000”1 is a welcome contribution to the post-colonial study of local legal epistemologies. More specifically, it is a useful matrix for focusing on legal consciousness in Latin America. The region’s law is still often dismissed in mainstream accounts as historically anachronistic, mindlessly mimetic of law in the West, conceptually limited, and/or culturally discordant with local societies. Duncan’s piece helps to chip away at this simple picture. He demonstrates the extensive migrations of legal thought throughout the world and their multiple local politics and uses. Additionally, he insightfully describes distinct legal elements globalized at different points: reasoning techniques, institutions, vocabularies, and the like. As such, the work provides a suggestive framework for exploring local legal developments in post-colonial sites, while simultaneously relating them to legal thought in Europe and the U.S.