I'm happy to report that my article, "Horizontal and vertical influences in colonial legal transplantation: water by-laws in British Palestine", recently was awarded the best article prize by the Israel Association for Law and History. (See related posts here.) I'd like to reproduce (in translation) one point made by the prize committee in its statement, as I think it could be useful for others' research:
Beyond the excellence of the article itself, the committee believes that Schorr's article can serve as a model for future studies of legal transplantation. The article considers not only the process of transplantation as a product of the sovereign or lawyer's will, but also the material objects through which transplantation takes place - letters, memos, newspapers, and statute books - and it shows the importance of prosaic, everyday factors for this process, such as bureaucratic practices or even the location of law libraries.
In short, material factors matter - a point that environmental history knows full well, but is often shortchanged by legal histories.
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| Jerusalem Water Works. Ras el Ain. Engine room (Matson, 1930s?) |
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