Lawyering imperial encounters
- Date:2024-12-19 - Type :OUV
- Authors:Sara Dezalay
Sara Dezalay is Professor of International Law and International Relations at ESPOL. With a background in law and political science, she holds a PhD in law from the European University Institute and a Habilitation à diriger des recherches (HDR) from Panthéon-Sorbonne University Paris I.
Sara Dezalay's research revisits the long history of extraction between the African continent and global capitalism since the 19th-century scramble for Africa. Focusing on sites of imperial encounters—in London, Paris, Abidjan, Bujumbura, Kinshasa, Johannesburg, and The Hague—her latest monograph, Lawyering Imperial Encounters. Negotiating Africa's Relationship with the World Economy (Cambridge University Press, 2024), shows how legal intermediaries negotiate and justify Africa's subordinate position in the global economy. She demonstrates the symbiosis between the legacy of imperialism and the detrimental societal and environmental impact of the current rush for Africa's “green” minerals. Her work offers a powerful postcolonial critique of the double bind of law, both an instrument of facilitation and a bulwark against predation.
Her current research project analyzes how dispute resolution mechanisms (from local courts to international investment arbitration) contribute to codifying the symbolic and material value of climate change, focusing on four empirical contexts: the Democratic Republic of Congo, a key extraction site for minerals essential to the carbon transition and new technologies; Bolivia, a hotspot for ecological and political struggles over natural resources; India, where new technologies, labor, castes, and indigenous resistance meet extractive capitalism; and Singapore, an emerging center of global justice for mediating the value of financial flows.
In 2020-22-2025, Sara Dezalay also served as an adjunct judge (appointed by the UNHCR) at the National Court of Asylum (CNDA). She subsequently co-coordinated an ethnographic investigation of asylum justice with Sharon Weill (American University of Paris), funded by the Mission droit et justice (French Ministry of Justice). Their public report, Asylum justice: between crisis and crisis routine. Ethnography of the National Court of Asylum, is forthcoming.