Unsettling Legal Imperialism and Cultivating Homegrown Law: Why Law Schools Need Pacific Studies
Date
Authors
Monson, Rebecca
Asafo, Dylan
Foukona, Joseph D
Fa‘amatuainu, Bridget
Supervisor
Item type
Journal Article
Degree name
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
University of Hawai'i Press
Abstract
Legal scholarship has often been deeply informed by the study of Pacific legal systems, but in law schools across the world there has been very little interest in teaching about, let alone learning from, the region and its people. Scholars and insights from the region remain grossly underrepresented and pushed to the margins of legal scholarship, and this silencing reproduces the underrepresentation of Pasifika people in law schools, the legal profession, and critical global dialogues regarding justice systems. We argue that legal scholars, educators, and students have much to learn from increased engagement with Pacific studies. We suggest that such engagement is particularly critical for law schools across Oceania if we are to have any hope of developing the homegrown theories and practices necessary to contribute to anticolonial movements for liberation across our region and beyond.Description
Keywords
Anthropology, law, legal education, anticolonialism, racism, Pacific studies, Eurocentrism, US-centrism, critical legal scholarship, epistemologies, place-based scholarship
Source
The Contemporary Pacific, 37(1), 76-112. ISSN: 1527-9464 (Online), Project MUSE, The University of Hawai'i Press. doi: 10.1353/cp.2025.a982162
Publisher's version
Rights statement
This is the Author's Accepted Manuscript of an article in The Contemporary Pacific © 2025 University of Hawai‘i Press. The full Version of Record can be found at DOI: 10.1353/cp.2025.a982162