Colonizing Hawai'i: The Cultural Power of LawHow does law transform family, sexuality, and community in the fractured social world characteristic of the colonizing process? The law was a cornerstone of the so called civilizing process of nineteenth century colonialism. It was simultaneously a means of transformation and a marker of the seductive idea of civilization. Sally Engle Merry reveals how, in Hawai'i, indigenous Hawaiian law was displaced by a transplanted Anglo American law as global