"[Futility] is a meticulously documented and ethnographically inspired history of Chinese and American foreign relations. Why do American lawyers export American legal norms, particularly to places with their own rich legal traditions? The answer is as unexpected as it is revelatory...American foreign relations are built upon the meeting of two unexpected forces and disciplines: law and religion...The book is essential reading for comparative legal historians, rule-of-law practitioners, and those who study the impact of law in Sino-American relations." -- Mark Massoud, Asian Journal of Law and Society
"In this exceptionally sweeping and ambitious book, Jed Kroncke provides a richly researched treatment of the long and eventful engagement of the United States with China and its legal system. The Futility of Law and Development is a historical lamentation for the supposed decline and fall of American legal "comparativism" defined here as a broad-mindedness about and openness to foreign legal ideas and practices. A short review cannot do justice to the analytical subtlety and empirical depth of Kroncke's eight chapters and two exemplary (in both senses of the word) case studies." -- Rande Kostal, Law and History Review
"It is hard to imagine that any attempt would do justice to the richness of the historical narrative and the complexity of Kroncke's analysis...[he] moves away from the common place criticism that law and development reforms do not work, to ask what law and development scholars may be losing by engaging in its present-day universalism; he concludes that not only are time and money being wasted in failed attempts to export American law abroad, but that the law and development discourse has largely closed the intellectual space for enriching comparative law scholarship...Kroncke provides a passionate call for a return to fruitful comparative exercises, where we all could learn from our differences." -- Mariana Prado, Asian Journal of International Law
"The particular strength of [Kroncke's] historical presentation lies in its skillful combination of biographical elements with broader historical dynamics...the Futility of Law and Development is a worthwhile read for all who deal with the ambivalent role of law and legal proselytizing in the nineteenth century and beyond." -- Stefan Kroll, Rechtsgeschichte - Legal History
"Kroncke...provides an extensively researched and well-argued analysis of the misperceptions and missteps associated with US attempts to promote the introduction of a legal system in China based on the US model...Chapters addressing the impact of perceptions regarding the "laws of China" on efforts to understand the evolution of Chinese legal norms - as well as the two case studies involving Frank Goodnow and Roscoe Pound - are particularly insightful in the manner in which they address the missionary zeal of US legal reformers. Kroncke's concluding analysis of US legal reform efforts in China in the post-Maoist period within the context of a messianic past provides important insights." -- C.W. Herrick, CHOICE
"[Futility] represents a criticism of the traditional methods and approaches of law and development...demonstrating how the field's universalist tendencies and aspirations originated historically through the proselytizing of Protestant missionaries who viewed American law as intertwined with American Christianity...Kroncke's final wish is that one day American law can recover the legal cosmopolitanism of its founding and return to cultivating a more authentic practice of comparative law." -- Giorgio Mocavini, Rivista Trimestrale di Diritto Pubblico
"Kroncke recovers a wide-ranging legal cosmopolitanism as the least appreciated, if not outright ignored, of our Founders' shared commitments. Using transnational sources wholly unappreciated to date, he artfully reveals through the Sino-American relationship how this virtue was lost through interwoven transformations in American legal, religious, and diplomatic history. A work whose lessons need by heeded by all those concerned with preserving American law's historical vibrancy in the contemporary era, or with how we conceive of America's role in the international world." -William E. Nelson, Edward Weinfeld Professor of Law, New York University School of Law
"Beautifully written, The Futility of Law and Development is bracing, erudite, and genuinely original. Even those familiar with development or Sino-American relations will be astonished at how much they learn. Jedidiah Kroncke is not only one of the most important and insightful China scholars of his generation, but also of comparative law and legal globalization. A tour-de-force of international legal history with urgent implications for modern American legal culture." - Amy Chua, John M. Duff, Jr. Professor of Law, Yale Law School
"Americans keep hoping that projects to export our law will be the key to spurring economic growth and liberal rights in developing countries. The projects keep failing, yet the hope always revives. Kroncke's brilliant exploration of two centuries of American lawyers' engagement with China helps to explain why: the missionary-lawyers are the direct secularized heirs of lawyer-missionaries, just as confident in the universal validity of their models and impervious to the true lessons of their experiences. He recovers a time when a more cosmopolitan America was willing to learn from other societies, even while aspiring to be an exemplar of republican democracy." - Robert Gordon, Professor of Law, Stanford University and Chancellor Kent Professor of Law and Legal History, Yale University
"What an impressive read! Kroncke's book is comparative law at the best of its potential. History, thick explanation, critique, and new possibilities. The reader will realize how the missionary precursors of the Wilsonian era reshaped the very nature of American comparative law and, ever since, American law's problematic relationship with the international world. Understanding our disciplinary shortcomings is the best medicine for overcoming them." - Ugo Mattei, Alfred and Hanna Fromm Professor of International and Comparative law, UC Hastings
"[Futility] is a sophisticated critical dissection of the drawbacks of American legal export...a much a loss for the U.S. as for the world, because it has foreclosed the willingness of politicians and lawyers to see such complexity as an invitation for U.S. internal domestic experimentation and renewal. The book offers a beautiful reconstruction of the American legal imagination and approach to China...a provocative retelling of the history of American legal export, one that no doubt will generate fruitful debate and will have to be reckoned with by legal historians, legal comparativists, and scholars of U.S. foreign policy." -Aziz Rana, JOTWELL
"Although The Futility of Law and Development is primarily a historical work, its contemporary significance is clear. It is a crucial time to reflect on the rocky record of America's engagement with China's legal system. U.S.-China relations stand at a critical juncture with simultaneous substantial interdependence and palpable tension. Members of the U.S. government, nongovernmental organizations, and academia whose work involves China's legal system would be wise to take pause and put The Futility of Law and Development on their bedside tables." - Margaret K. Lewis, Seton Hall University, China Review International
