Étienne Le Roy (France) is emeritus Professor of Legal Anthropology at the University Panthéon-Sorbonne, Paris 1 where he has directed the research Laboratory for Legal Anthropology of Paris from 1988 to 2007 and Curricula of African Studies, from 1993 to 2003. Since the mid-Sixties he has devoted his fieldwork to the study of land tenure systems and policies governing the appropriation of territories in Africa. Among many publications, Le jeu des lois, (Paris, LGDJ, 1999) offers his theoreti¬cal contribution to a legal “dynamic” anthropology and La terre de l’autre, une anthropologie des régimes d’appropriation foncière is the synthesis of forty years of research on land issues.