Some Reflections on the Fourth Chilean-German-Tanzanian Legal Talk

On December 3, 2021, the Heidelberg Center for Latin America convened a group of academicians from around the world to explore the way legal pluralism contests values (including the protection of universal human rights), disrupts our national legal systems, and provides for self-determination. The transnational webinar was co-sponsored by the University of Heidelberg and University of Bayreuth of Germany, Universidad de Chile, University of Dar Es Salaam in Tanzania, Faculdades de Campinas in Brasil, as well as California Western School of Law/Proyecto ACCESO in the United States, and the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD). The webinar brought together participants with an interest in Comparative Law, Indigenous Studies, Legal Anthropology, and Sociology of Law. The Essay examines exercises of judicial imperialism which involved the wholesale importation of other countries’ norms, rules and institutions and the calls, in the post-Independence era, for more locally sourced legal cultural practices