“Issues of great importance for understanding the contemporary world”

Interview with Sebastian M. Spitra on law, colonialism and the history of empires

Legal historian Dr Sebastian M. Spitra has been a research professor at the Käte Hamburger Kolleg since October 2024. We spoke to him about his current research projects.

Dr Spitra, before your research professorship, you were already a fellow at the Kolleg. What research project did you work on during your fellowship?

As a fellow, I first pursued a project entitled ‘Negotiating pluralism transnationally: The concept of exception in the justification of private international law’. The point is that, since the 19th century, we have been living increasingly in a world of (nation) states, and I am interested in how the law has changed in this transformation of global proportions. The area of law I am looking at is private international law. However, this legal subfield does not regulate the content of legal norms, such as family, contract, inheritance or property law, but is purely a law of coordination or an instrument to mitigate conflict of laws.

This means that it regulates which legal system should be applicable to a legal relationship in the first place, mediating as it does between the pluralism of state, federal or regional legal systems, each of which can claim to regulate a legal issue by making different links.

What is particularly exciting about this is that, despite its name, private international law is not actually international law (i.e. public international law) and thus supranational law, but rather domestic law. Each state therefore has its own private international law. The question is how it came about that a conflict of laws developed that regulates transnational legal relationships relatively smoothly. This is no trivial matter, because sovereignty and jurisdiction are always at stake in such matters. So it is revealing to see how a branch of law has emerged that coordinates the diversity of legal systems in the first place. The resulting text will be published as part of the multi-volume Cambridge History of International Law.

You have been research professor since 1 October 2024 and will thus help shape the programme of the Kolleg. What issues and projects are you currently working on?

At the moment, I am dealing with legal pluralism in three further dimensions, and I am conducting a subproject on each.

With my colleague João Figueiredo from the Kolleg, I am pursuing the project ‘The legal pluralism of heritage’, where we intend to combine the insights of cultural studies regarding the material turn with an actual application of jurisprudence. Our testing ground here is the legal discourse surrounding the restitution of material culture or cultural property of colonial origin, an issue that the general public and the media are very interested in at the moment. The initial premise is that, in the legal dispute over the contexts of acquisition of material culture, the cases are judged almost exclusively according to the norms laid down by the international public law or the state norms of the former empires. The reason for this is intertemporal law, a principle that provides for legal systems to judge facts according to the law in force at the time of removal, appropriation or translocation. This is where our project comes into play, because we use legal pluralism as an analytical concept to look systematically at the normative systems of the societies of origin. On the one hand, we attempt to reconstruct the normative conditions and ideas in which the cultural objects were embedded; on the other, we also look at indigenous societies and at the lived practices in relation to these cultural objects, which are often understood as subject-objects. We held two workshops in Münster this year (‘Forensics of provenance’ and ‘Indigenous law’) as part of the project, with an open call for papers attracting about 80 submissions from researchers from all continents. It was particularly important for us to invite people from the Global South, for which we would like to take this opportunity to thank the Kolleg, since it was only this excellent research infrastructure that enabled us to carry out this project in such a way. The findings of the workshops will be published in an interdisciplinary volume that we are currently working on.

Your second subproject is entitled ‘Colonialism and law’. What is it about?

Based on a lecture series I held at the Weltmuseum Wien in 2023, I am currently writing a book, Worlds of Norms: A History of Colonialism and Law in the Modern Age, which I hope to publish next year. It provides an overview of the relationship between colonialism and law in the early modern and modern period, and in the era of decolonisation. These were all periods when legal pluralism had to be dealt with both in Europe and in the colonial sphere, with various ideas and practices developing in this regard. The book looks at three levels. First, at the extent to which European and non-European legal forms and normative ideas interacted, collided or influenced each other. Second, at the inter-imperial and international legal relationships, and at how the law structured and legitimised them. Third, at the colonial space and how the law constructed it. But it also deals with emancipatory legal practices.

Who is the book aimed at?

The book is aimed at students of law and history, on the one hand. On the other, the debates on the restitution of cultural property mentioned earlier show that the general public is also interested in such issues, which are of great importance for understanding the contemporary world and international relations. This book therefore also aims to make a contribution, using the latest academic research to introduce a broader audience to this diverse range of issues.

The title of your third research project is ‘The history of private law as the history of empires: New approaches to the legal history of the Habsburg Empire’. What is that about?

In this project, I would like to develop a new approach to examining and analysing the legal history of the Habsburg Empire as an empire. Historical and cultural studies cite the construction and handling of difference and plurality in the Habsburg Empire as an important characteristic, whether it be between different ethnic groups, nationalities, religions, ethnicities, or on a horizontal or vertical level. The integration of this diversity into state institutions is discussed in particular with regard to current social, international and supranational challenges. However, legal history and, in particular, the history of private law have not yet addressed these questions of how to deal with social and legal pluralism in the Habsburg Empire systematically.

At the same time, however, there is also a gap here in the historical sciences: while these research discourses already incorporate studies in the history of constitutional and administrative law, what has not yet played a significant role in the discussion of such questions are private law and its history. This project therefore aims to explore the possibilities that approaches from imperial history offer the history of private law, but also the possibilities that approaches from the history of private law offer imperial history. To this end, we will examine two test cases from the late 19th century: the legal phenomenon widespread in the southern and eastern European countries of the Habsburg monarchy of the colonate, and the introduction of international private law in the Habsburg Empire. These cases are intended to show that interdisciplinary discussion can provide important impetus and new insights into Austrian legal history and the history of the Habsburg Empire.

What do you particularly appreciate about your work at the Käte Hamburger Kolleg ‘Legal Unity and Pluralism’?

Discussion with international colleagues is important to me, but so is the interdisciplinarity here. It is a privilege to sit alongside anthropologists, sociologists, historians and legal scholars at the Kolleg, and to be able to enter into dialogue on common issues or research problems with our different professional and geographical backgrounds. I like in particular the balance between formal events and informal opportunities for discussion.

What are your hopes for your research professorship?

Actually, the ideas that I have received through my talks with Kolleg members and the fellows are already more than I had hoped for. It is great that actual research projects and collaborations have emerged here. I enjoy the concentrated working atmosphere and look forward to completing hopefully two of my projects during my time at the Kolleg. I am also excited to explore a new city and its surroundings. The city has a great deal to offer culturally, and I am also looking forward to the Christmas markets!

The interview was conducted in November 2024. The questions were posed by Kathrin Schulte.

---

Cite as:

Sebastian M. Spitra/Kathrin Schulte: “Issues of great importance for understanding the contemporary world”. Interview, EViR Blog, 09.01.2025, https://www.evir.uni-muenster.blog/en/interviewspitra/

License:

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

---