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International audience ; In recent years, men born into various non-Brahmanical castes, including former 'untouchables', have been appointed as priests at Brahmanical public temples in Kerala. The constitutionality of such appointments has been challenged and was eventually upheld by the Supreme Court in 2002. This decision, I suggest, has to be seen as the outcome of developments by which the courts came to define priesthood in terms of technical procedures performed by expert, but 'secular' persons, i.e. employees selected solely on merit. Such a legal understanding, however, conflicts with widely held expectations about priesthood in terms of birth qualifications. Birth equality for temple priestly services, I argue, has now become a possible legal claim as a result of the progressive administrative 'rationalization' of Hindu religious institutions through State action, and because it also meets for various reasons with political consensus.

International audience ; In recent years, men born into various non-Brahmanical castes, including former 'untouchables', have been appointed as priests at Brahmanical public temples in Kerala. The constitutionality of such appointments has been challenged and was eventually upheld by the Supreme Court in 2002. This decision, I suggest, has to be seen as the outcome of developments by which the courts came to define priesthood in terms of technical procedures performed by expert, but 'secular' persons, i.e. employees selected solely on merit. Such a legal understanding, however, conflicts with widely held expectations about priesthood in terms of birth qualifications. Birth equality for temple priestly services, I argue, has now become a possible legal claim as a result of the progressive administrative 'rationalization' of Hindu religious institutions through State action, and because it also meets for various reasons with political consensus.

International audience ; In recent years, men born into various non-Brahmanical castes, including former 'untouchables', have been appointed as priests at Brahmanical public temples in Kerala. The constitutionality of such appointments has been challenged and was eventually upheld by the Supreme Court in 2002. This decision, I suggest, has to be seen as the outcome of developments by which the courts came to define priesthood in terms of technical procedures performed by expert, but 'secular' persons, i.e. employees selected solely on merit. Such a legal understanding, however, conflicts with widely held expectations about priesthood in terms of birth qualifications. Birth equality for temple priestly services, I argue, has now become a possible legal claim as a result of the progressive administrative 'rationalization' of Hindu religious institutions through State action, and because it also meets for various reasons with political consensus.

The book seeks to critically examine the implication of a constitution of law for a political society. It presents a collection of essays that seek to investigate how power acts on power, how limits produce excess, how separation of powers produces the union of powers (sanctified by the very constitution that had guaranteed the division in the first place), and how the theory of separation is, at the same time, a myth and a reality. At the backdrop of the book, of course, is the theory that every good constitution rigorously separates the legislature, the executive, and the judiciary from one another to guarantee the independence of each of these powers, such that this separation results in life, liberty, and security. If a constitution, however, symbolises and produces power, precisely because it separates one site of power from another, it follows that it is power itself that is the limit of power. Constitutionalism as a political culture of laws, therefore, must explain the dynamics of power.The book addresses both constitutions and the societies in which they emerge. Many of the essays in this collection show how institutional practices originating from a legal text create a matrix of power that owes its life, neither to a contract between men, nor between the state and men, nor even between the society and men, but rather to relations established, organized, and formalized by laws. The collection is significant because it gives colonial and post-colonial experiences a justified place in studies of law and constitutionalism, for it shows that while Montesquieu, Kant, and Burke each in their own way were promoting the spirit of laws, a more significant history of law-making was being enacted in order to defend a particular rule, and a particular type of government on another side of the world. Based on comparative studies in several countries across three continents, the book centrally deals with issues of constitutionalism, politica

Comment se représente-t-on le corps dans le monde hindou ? Comment y est-il pensé et décrit ? Alors même que des recherches anthropologiques sur la société indienne l'ont placé au fondement des rapports sociaux entre castes, ou à la base des conceptions sur l'impureté, le corps n'avait jusqu'ici guère été étudié en lui-même. Aussi ce livre s'attache-t-il à restituer la multiplicité et la complexité de ses représentations, depuis la période védique ancienne jusqu'à nos jours, à travers l'icono

International audience ; For anthropologists as well as for historians, law practices and their discursive productions provide a way of studying interactions and decisions in a variety of domains of social and political life—from social and family relationships to issues such as criminality, environmental protection, natural resource management, religious practices, or human rights. The following studies deal with such issues by using the "lens of the law" as a vantage point over society, giving access to sometimes intimate situations otherwise difficult to document for an observer, as well as a filter through which social issues have to be shaped when evolving into court cases. Thus studying how law is used by people and how it impacts their lives is all the more important as, despite delays, poor facilities, and widespread corruption, courts often represent the main if not the only hope for many to redress their grievances. As a consequence the Courts are bustling with an activity that testifies to the vital role they play in society as sites of power that affect every aspect of life therein.

International audience ; For anthropologists as well as for historians, law practices and their discursive productions provide a way of studying interactions and decisions in a variety of domains of social and political life—from social and family relationships to issues such as criminality, environmental protection, natural resource management, religious practices, or human rights. The following studies deal with such issues by using the "lens of the law" as a vantage point over society, giving access to sometimes intimate situations otherwise difficult to document for an observer, as well as a filter through which social issues have to be shaped when evolving into court cases. Thus studying how law is used by people and how it impacts their lives is all the more important as, despite delays, poor facilities, and widespread corruption, courts often represent the main if not the only hope for many to redress their grievances. As a consequence the Courts are bustling with an activity that testifies to the vital role they play in society as sites of power that affect every aspect of life therein.

International audience ; For anthropologists as well as for historians, law practices and their discursive productions provide a way of studying interactions and decisions in a variety of domains of social and political life—from social and family relationships to issues such as criminality, environmental protection, natural resource management, religious practices, or human rights. The following studies deal with such issues by using the "lens of the law" as a vantage point over society, giving access to sometimes intimate situations otherwise difficult to document for an observer, as well as a filter through which social issues have to be shaped when evolving into court cases. Thus studying how law is used by people and how it impacts their lives is all the more important as, despite delays, poor facilities, and widespread corruption, courts often represent the main if not the only hope for many to redress their grievances. As a consequence the Courts are bustling with an activity that testifies to the vital role they play in society as sites of power that affect every aspect of life therein.

International audience ; In this paper we explore how the notion of 'truth' is invoked and managed practically in criminal cases in India. We address this issue by first evoking the (rather idealistic) principle it officially represents for justice, then by analyzing some of the techniques intended to elicit a judicial truth in the context of the adversary system adopted in India. Despite the propensity with which witnesses contradict the previous statements they made to the police, legal professionals are able to suggest in writing an alternative narrative to the oral testimonies given at the bar. In order to understand this situation, it is necessary to take into account the social, economic and political settings, as these out-of-court factors heavily weigh on the way a trial unfolds - and on the kind of 'truth' it may establish.

International audience ; In this paper we explore how the notion of 'truth' is invoked and managed practically in criminal cases in India. We address this issue by first evoking the (rather idealistic) principle it officially represents for justice, then by analyzing some of the techniques intended to elicit a judicial truth in the context of the adversary system adopted in India. Despite the propensity with which witnesses contradict the previous statements they made to the police, legal professionals are able to suggest in writing an alternative narrative to the oral testimonies given at the bar. In order to understand this situation, it is necessary to take into account the social, economic and political settings, as these out-of-court factors heavily weigh on the way a trial unfolds - and on the kind of 'truth' it may establish.

International audience ; In this paper we explore how the notion of 'truth' is invoked and managed practically in criminal cases in India. We address this issue by first evoking the (rather idealistic) principle it officially represents for justice, then by analyzing some of the techniques intended to elicit a judicial truth in the context of the adversary system adopted in India. Despite the propensity with which witnesses contradict the previous statements they made to the police, legal professionals are able to suggest in writing an alternative narrative to the oral testimonies given at the bar. In order to understand this situation, it is necessary to take into account the social, economic and political settings, as these out-of-court factors heavily weigh on the way a trial unfolds - and on the kind of 'truth' it may establish.