A Reader’s Guide to Legal Orientalism

Abstract

In 2016, Teemu Ruskola's book Legal Orientalism: China, the United States, and Modern Law was published in translation in China. This essay analyzes the Chinese reception of this book. Originally addressed to a North Atlantic readership, Legal Orientalism examines critically the asymmetric relationship in which Euro-American law and Chinese law stand to one another, the former regarding itself as an embodiment of universal values while viewing the latter's as culturally particular ones. The essay explores what happens when a “Western” work of self-criticism is transmitted to an “Eastern” audience. In this context, it analyzes the politics of self-Orientalism, Oriental legalism, and the comparative method.