Constitutions and Empires

The answer to question, What comes after linguistic turn? appears to be, at least in part, the imperial turn. As scholars across a range of disciplines begin to agree that nation-state is a single distorted lens through which to view modern history, in all its political, economic, and cultural dimensions, commands new critical attention. Within sociolegal history, turn to empire is especially promising. Building both on a wellestablished preoccupation with legal administration in older imperial history and on sophisticated new studies of legal culture in colonial settings, historians of law and empire can hope to move beyond limitations of either tradition. The administration of empire, long a topic of imperial histories, becomes a subject of cultural analysis; colonial studies, for some time focused on cultural hybridity, subaltern movements, and origins of national culture, broadens to include constellation of legal processes spanning imperial formations.