Macaulay and the Indian Penal Code of 1862

The Myth of the Inherent Superiority and Modernity of the English Legal System Compared to India's Legal System in the Nineteenth Century

Datos Bibliográficos

ID3608073
AutoresDavid Skuy (University of Toronto, autor de correspondencia)
Año1998
Volumen32
Número3
Páginas513-557
Fecha de publicación1998-07-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaModern Asian Studies (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0026-749X • E-ISSN: 1469-8099
EditorialCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0026749x98003035
OpenAlexW2167413422
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas32
Referencias citadas12

On 1 January 1862, the British enacted the Indian Penal Code, and within two decades most of India's law was codified. Ironically, England still awaits a criminal code, and the vast majority of English law remains uncodified, in the form of statute or common law. Hindu and Muslim law was rarely included in these Indian law codes, so the entire codification process represented the transplantation of English law to India, complete with lawyers and judges. A modest historiography has investigated the effect codification had on Indian society; or as Marc Galanter theorized, what happened to India's indigenous law as a result of the formation of a modern Indian legal system. However, Galanter's question implicitly assumed that England's legal system was modern. That assumption has resulted in a misleading interpretation of the Indian Penal Code

Code (set theory · Common law · Comparative law · Criminal Code · Criminal law · English law · Historiography · Indigenous · Legal history · Legal profession · Legal realism · Modernity · Penal code · Political science · Statute · Judicial and Constitutional Studies · Law · Law in Society and Culture · Multicultural Socio-Legal Studies