Author: Mae Ngai

Legal Cosmopolitanism: Professor Ngai Comments

[Professor Mae Ngai is Lung Professor of Asian American Studies and Professor of History, Columbia University] I especially appreciate Christina Burnett’s examination of Federico Degetau’s “legal cosmopolitanism” in Gonzales v. Williams. Burnett shows that intellectuals in the colonial periphery made a unique contribution to the legal discourse on empire and citizenship. Degetau’s critique, that the American wish to “nationalize” Puerto Ricans...