Colonial law created an inside-outside sphere for customary law

Evidence

By invoking “local customs,” a sphere was created within (Western) law that was outside the law, within the law, yet outside of its jurisdiction, a sphere governed by distinct cultural and political imperatives. — Gil Anidjar, The Jew, the Arab, 39

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: The paradox of a sphere simultaneously inside and outside Western law — exclusion manufactured by inclusion — is a genuinely paradigm-shifting account of how colonial difference was legally fabricated.
• XREF: Connects to James Scott’s ‘seeing like a state’ and to Foucault’s account of law as productive rather than merely repressive power.