Table of Contents

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS ix ACKNOWLEDGMENTS xi A NOTE ON LANGUAGE AND TERMINOLOGY xiii ONE Introduction 3 PART ONE: ENCOUNTERS IN A CONTACT ZONE: NEW ENGLAND MISSIONARIES, LAWYERS, AND THE APPROPRIATION OF ANGLO-AMERICAN LAW, 1820-1852 TWO The Process of Legal Transformation 35 THREE The First Transition: Religious Law 63 FOUR The Second Transition: Secular Law 86 PART TWO: LOCAL PRACTICES OF POLICING AND JUDGING IN HILO, HAWAI'I FIVE The Social History of a Plantation Town 117 Six Judges and Caseloads in Hilo 145 SEVEN Protest and the Law on the Hilo Sugar Plantations 207 EIGHT Sexuality, Marriage, and the Management of the Body 221 NINE Conclusions 258 APPENDIXES A CASES FROM HILO DISTRICT COURT 269 B ACCOMPANYING TABLES 325 NOTES 331 REFERENCES 349 INDEX 365

Promotional Information

This is an important study which details a crucial (and often ignored) chapter in American legal history. It stands to make an important contribution to the anthropology of law, to the history of colonial legality, and to the methodology of ethnography in the archives. -- Annelise Riles, Cornell University This is a work of exceptional merit: substantively innovative and valuable, interpretively cogent and insightful, stylistically lucid and engaging. It reads very well as a significant account of the historical Hawaiian situation and as a major contribution to a multidimensional examination of colonial law and, especially, of a crucial and fairly singular American colonial enterprise. -- Don Brenneis, University of California, Santa Cruz

About the Author

Sally Engle Merry is Class of 1949 Professor of Ethics in the Anthropology Department at Wellesley College. Her books include Urban Danger: Life in a Neighborhood of Strangers, Getting Justice and Getting Even: Legal Consciousness among Working-Class Americans, and The Possibility of Popular Justice: A Case Study of American Community Mediation, coedited with Neal Milner. She is currently president of the Association for Political and Legal Anthropology.

Reviews

Winner of the 2002 Williard Hurst Prize in Legal History