Empire's Law? The Rule of Law in British India, 1858-1950

为了有助于一个反身的帝国历史连接法律的和宪法的历史，概念和话语理论的历史，本研究的重点是如何在印度的英国殖民地遭遇改变了英国法律和它的权力从东印度公司在1858年过渡到英国王室和1950年独立的印度共和国的第一部宪法的制定之间的争论。英属印度的社会、文化、宗教、道德和法律的多元化的日常实践是如何促进国家内外的宪政的？与所有殖民政权一样，大英帝国在殖民扩张过程中也带来了自己的法律。因此，法治也适用于印度吗？英国法律代表了话语原则和法律的形式的结合：这种活的法律对英国在印度的殖民统治的背景有何反应？关于法律维斯维斯殖民统治的法律的有效性和合法性的问题引发了帝国的丑闻，即关于法律和正义、正当性和英国性的重大话语事件。关于个人自由、表达自由、集会自由和保护个人自由不受国家任意干预等政治权利的激烈斗争在两个辩护论坛上进行：第一个是在拉吉的法庭竞技场，第二个是在大英帝国的公共领域。在处理针对国家的政治犯罪的国家审判中，印度律师倾向于用其固有的悖论来对抗英国的法治。该项目询问这些辩论以何种方式影响了印度法律的秩序的转变和法律的推理本身。法律的语言不仅创造了殖民地国家，而且还对它提出了质疑，并阐明了对政治代表和替代治理形式的要求。

In order to contribute to a reflexive Empire history linking legal and constitutional history, the history of concepts and discourse theory, this study focuses on how the British colonial encounter in India changed the English law and its argumentation between the transition of power from the East India Company to the British Crown in 1858 and the enactment of the first Constitution of the independent Republic of India in 1950. How did the everyday practice of social, cultural, religious, moral and legal pluralism in British India contribute to a constitutionalism in and beyond the state? Like all colonial regimes, the British Empire had brought its law with it as part of the colonial expansion. Did the Rule of law consequently also apply to India? The English law represented a combination of discursive principle and legal form: How did this living law react to the context of British colonial rule in India? Questions about the legal validity and legitimacy of law vis-à-vis the colonial rule provoked scandals of Empire, i.e. major discursive events, about law and justice, justification and Britishness. Innumerable battles over political rights such as personal freedom, the freedom of expression, freedom of assembly and the safeguard of individual liberty against arbitrary state intervention were fought in two fora of justification: i.e. firstly in the arena of the courtrooms of the Raj, secondly in the public sphere of the British Empire. In State trials dealing with political offenses against the state, Indian barristers tended to confront the British Rule of law with its inherent paradoxa. The project asks in which way these debates affected the transformation of the legal order in India and the legal reasoning itself. The language of the law did not only create the colonial state, it also served to question it and to articulate demands for political representation and alternative forms of governance.