Nation and Family: Personal Law, Cultural Pluralism, and Gendered Citizenship in India. By Narendra Subramanian. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 2014. 377 pp. $65 paper.

• Published date: 01 September 2015
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/lasr.12160
• Date: 01 September 2015

reading for those who care about law in non-democratic states. The

volume’s chapters draw on a variety of political contexts and epochs

to advance sociolegal knowledge of the unexpected places and ways

that constitutions matter—paving the path toward a new generation

of scholarship on comparative constitutions.

References

Cheesman, Nick (2011) “How an Authoritarian Regime in Burma Used Special Courts

to Defeat Judicial Independence,” 45 Law & Society Rev. 801–30.

Cope, Kevin (2013) “The Intermestic Constitution: Lessons from the World’s Newest

Nation,” 53 Virginia J. of International Law 667–724.

Ginsburg, Tom, & Tamir Moustafa (2008) Rule By Law: The Politicsof Courts in Authoritar-

ian Regimes. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ.Press.

Hilbink, Lisa (2007) Judges beyond Politics in Democracy and Dictatorship: Lessons from Chile.

Cambridge: Cambridge Univ.Press.

Massoud, Mark Fathi (2013) Law’s Fragile State: Colonial, Authoritarian, and Humanitarian

Legacies in Sudan. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ.Press.

Moustafa, Tamir (2007) The Struggle for Constitutional Power: Law, Politics, and Economic

Development in Egypt. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ.Press.

Rajah, Jothie (2012) Authoritarian Rule of Law: Legislation, Discourse, and Legitimacy in Sin-

gapore. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press.

Stern, Rachel (2013) Environmental Litigation in China: A Study in Political Ambivalence.

Cambridge: Cambridge Univ.Press.

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Nation and Family: Personal Law, Cultural Pluralism, and Gendered

Citizenship in India. By Narendra Subramanian. Stanford,

California: Stanford University Press, 2014. 377 pp. $65 paper.

Reviewed by Pooja Parmar, Department of Law & Legal Studies,

Carleton University

Nation and Family points to the need to examine carefully the ways

in which conceptions of nation inform attempts to regulate family

life through law and policy in plural societies. It addresses questions

about plurality of personal laws and the patterns and pace of family

law reform in independent India. One of the principal arguments

Subramanian makes is that the extent and direction of personal law

reform is determined by specific interactions between discourses of

nation and community and the “coalition-building ambitions” of

the political elites. In India this resulted in what he describes as

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