Rohit De is a lawyer and historian of modern South Asia and focuses on the legal history of the Indian subcontinent and the common law world. As a legal historian he moves beyond asking what the law was; to what actors thought law was and how this knowledge shaped their quotidian tactics, thoughts and actions. In recent years, this has enabled his research to move beyond the political borders to South Asia to uncover transnational legal geographies of commerce, migration and rights across East Africa, Southeast Asia and the Caribbean.
His is the author of A People’s Constitution: The Everyday life of law in the Indian republic (Princeton University Press, 2018) and Assembling India’s Constitution: Towards a New History (co-authored with Ornit Shani, 2023). His publications also include “Empire of Laws” in Cambridge History of the Indian Subcontinent (David Gilmartin, Manu Goswami and Mrinalini Sinha, eds, under review), “The Jurisprudence of Decolonization: The Postcolonial Career of D.N Pritt and the Practice of Rebellious Lawyering” (forthcoming), « The Indian Constitution: Moment, Epics and Everyday Lives » (2020), « A Peripatetic World Court” Cosmopolitan Courts, Nationalist Judges and the Indian Appeal to the Privy Council” » (2014), « Mumtaz Bibi’s Broken Heart: The Many Lives of the Dissolution of Muslim Marriage Act, 1939 » (2009).