Personal Autonomy in Plural Societies: A Principle and its Paradoxes (Law and Anthropology)

Marie-Claire Foblets is Professor of Law at the University of Leuven, Belgium and since 2012 also Director of the Department of Law & Anthropology at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Halle, Germany. She has held various visiting professorships both within and outside Europe. She has conducted extensive research and published widely on issues of migration law, citizenship/nationality laws, compulsory integration, anti-racism and non-discrimination, etc. In the field of anthropology of law, her research focuses on cultural diversity and legal practice, with a particular interest in the application of Islamic family law in Europe, and more recently in the accommodation of cultural and religious diversity under state law. Alison Dundes Renteln is Professor of Political Science, Anthropology, Law, and Public Policy at the University of Southern California, where she teaches International Law and Human Rights. She has taught judges, lawyers, court interpreters, jury consultants, and police officers at meetings of the American Bar Association, National Association of Women Judges, North American South Asian Bar Association, American Society of Trial Consultants, and others. She has collaborated with the UN on the implementation of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, lectured on comparative legal ethics in Bangkok and Manila at ABA-sponsored conferences, and served on several California civil rights commissions and the California committee of Human Rights Watch. She has published extensively on her areas of research. Michele Graziadei is Professor of Comparative Law at the University of Turin, Italy. His research concentrates on the methodology of comparative law, legal pluralism, law and language, and on other theoretical problems relating to the comparison of laws. He has published widely in several languages, and has directed or taken part in international research projects concerning law and other social sciences. He is a member of the International Academy of Comparative Law, President of the Italian Society for Research on Comparative Law (SIRD), President of the Italian Group of the Association Capitant, and fellow of the European Centre on Tort and Insurance Law, Vienna. He has been a visiting professor at Paris 2 Panthéon-Assas, Cornell University, Université de Luxembourg, and Bar-Ilan University, and is visiting Professor at the Université Jean Moulin, Lyon III. He teaches at the Faculté internationale de droit comparé, Strasbourg.