One of the major questions facing the world today is the role of
law in shaping identity and in balancing tradition with modernity.
In an arid corner of the Mediterranean region in the first decades
of the twentieth century, Mandate Palestine was confronting these
very issues. Assaf Likhovski examines the legal history of
Palestine, showing how law and identity interacted in a complex
colonial society in which British rulers and Jewish and Arab
subjects lived together.
Law in Mandate Palestine was not merely an instrument of power or a
method of solving individual disputes, says Likhovski. It was also
a way of answering the question, "Who are we?" British officials,
Jewish lawyers, and Arab scholars all turned to the law in their
search for their identities, and all used it to create and
disseminate a hybrid culture in which Western and non-Western norms
existed simultaneously. Uncovering a rich arsenal of legal
distinctions, notions, and doctrines used by lawyers to mediate
between different identities, Likhovski provides a comprehensive
account of the relationship between law and identity. His analysis
suggests a new approach to both the legal history of Mandate
Palestine and colonial societies in general.