Human Rights Encounter Legal Pluralism

This collection of essays interrogates how human rights law and practice acquire meaning in relation to legal pluralism, ie, the co-existence of more than one regulatory order in a same social field. As a social phenomenon, legal pluralism exists in all societies. As a legal construction, it is characteristic of particular regions, such as post-colonial contexts. Drawing on experiences from Latin America, Sub-Saharan Africa and Europe, the contributions in this volume analyse how different configurations of legal pluralism interplay with the legal and the social life of human rights. At the same time, they enquire into how human rights law and practice influence interactions that are subject to regulation by more than one normative regime. Aware of numerous misunderstandings and of the mutual suspicion that tends to exist between human rights scholars and anthropologists, the volume includes contributions from experts in both disciplines and intends to build bridges between normative and empirical theory.

'Human Rights and Legal Pluralism' opens with an article on how to integrate human rights into customary and religious legal systems generally before looking at a 'tribal' women's forum in South Rajastan, customary justice in Sierra Leone, indigenous justice systems in Latin America and deep legal pluralism in South Africa.

Human rights have transformed the way in which we conceive the place of the individual within the community and in relation to the state in a vast array of disciplines, including law, philosophy, politics, sociology, geography. The published output on human rights over the last five decades has been enormous, but has remained tightly bound to a notion of human rights as dialectically linking the individual and the state. Because of human rights’ dogged focus on the state and its actions, they have very seldom attracted the attention of legal pluralists. Indeed, some may have viewed the two as simply incompatible or relating to wholly distinct phenomena. This collection of essays is the first to bring together authors with established track records in the fields of legal pluralism and human rights, to explore the ways in which these concepts can be mutually reinforcing, delegitimizing, or competing. The essays reveal that there is no facile conclusion to reach but that the question opens avenues which are likely to be mined for years to come by those interested in how human rights can affect the behaviour of individuals and institutions.

Human rights have transformed the way in which we conceive the place of the individual within the community and in relation to the state in a vast array of disciplines, including law, philosophy, politics, sociology, geography. The published output on human rights over the last five decades has been enormous, but has remained tightly bound to a notion of human rights as dialectically linking the individual and the state. Because of human rights' focus on the state and its actions, they have very seldom attracted the attention of legal pluralists. Indeed, some may have viewed the two as simply incompatible or relating to wholly distinct phenomena. This collection of essays is the first to bring together authors with established track records in the fields of legal pluralism and human rights, to explore the ways in which these concepts can be mutually reinforcing, delegitimizing, or competing. The essays reveal that there is no facile conclusion to reach but that the question opens avenues which are likely to be mined for years to come by those interested in how human rights can affect the behaviour of individuals and institutions

Contents Luigi Ferrajoli: Past and Future of the State under Law u Mauro Zamboni: oRechtsstaato: What is it that Swedish development assistance, organisatons oexporto? u Hans Gribnau: Legal Principles and Legislative Instrumentalism u Maria Jose Falcon y Tella: Justified Illegality: The Question of Civil Disobedience u Hideo Sasakura: How should we discuss the Right of Resistance today? u K. Papageorgiou: Nations, persons, rights and responsibilities u M.N.S. Sellers: The Right to Secede u Stephan Kirste: Constitution and Time u Nicholas Aroney: Towards a General Theory of the Formation and Amendment of Federal Constitutions: A Comparative Study u Adriaan Anderson: Prosecuting Crime in a Constitutional State: The Recent South African Experience u Luis Villar-Borda: The Role of the Constitutional Court in the Advance of Law in a Developing Country u Marcela Forero: Colombia: a Multisovereignty State u Samuli Hurri: What of Tomorrow's Citizenship? Universal and Politics in Hannah Arendt and Jurgen Habermas u Marcelo Campos Galuppo: Constitutional Hermeneutics and Pluralism u Francoise Michaut: Pluralism in Law in Robert Cover's Writings u E. A. Huppes-Cluysenaer: Informal Rules do not Exist u Niels F. van Manen: The legal recognition of distinct communities u Peter Koller: Law and Virtue u Carl Lebeck: Coercion, co-ordination and normativity - towards a refined distinction between positive and negative rights u Sheldon Wein: Moral Pluralism and the Rule of Law.

Contents Brenda M. Baker: Will Kymlicka on Minority Cultures and their Entitlements - Patricia Smith: Legal Reason, Human Rights and Plural Values - B. de Castro Cid: Some paradoxes about collective human rights - Winfried Brugger: The Common Good and Pluralism in the Modern Constitutional State - Carla M. Zoethout: Does the multicultural Society Require New Human Rights? An Appeal to the Ideal of Constitutional Democracy - Valentin Petev: Legal Ought and Moral Ought in a Pluralistic Society - John Mikhail: Islamic Rationalism and the Foundation of Human Rights - Kamal Hossain: Pluralism and the Law, Evolving legal frameworks for change in Muslim societies: some reflections - Kate McMillan: Non-indigenous minority rights in the neo-liberal state: the New Zealand experience - Agnes T. M. Schreiner: Observing the differences - Christoph Eberhard / Nidhi Gupta: Towards a Pluralist and Intercultural Approach to Law: Tackling the Challenge of Women's Rights in India - Cees Maris / Sawitri Saharso: Honour Killing: A Case for Cultural Defence? - Albie Sachs: Towards the Revitalisation of Customary Law in an Egalitarian Constitutional Democracy - Christa Rautenbach: Legal Pluralism versus Gender Equality: The South African Scenario - Marek Smolak: Lustration and Reconciliation. Polish and South African experience - Luiz Fernando Coelho: The Future of Law and the Remembrance of the Future - Stephen C. Hicks: Spirit and Law: the legal person in a post-modern, global, hi-tech world - Barry J. Rodger: Globalisation and the Depoliticisation of Competition Law - David Castle: Legal Ontology and the Conservation of Biodiversity - Keith Culver: Returning to Normal: Can Corrective Justice Be Achieved When Genetically Modified Salmon Escape and Do Damage? - Willemien du Plessis / Johan Nel: Environmental Framework Law: a strategy towards integrating pluralistic legislation - Kimmo Nuotio: Making Sense of the aeInternational' and the aeRegional' in Criminal Law and Criminal Policy.

The complex legal situations arising from the coexistence of international law, state law, and social and religious norms in different parts of the world often include scenarios of conflict between them. These conflicting norms issued from different categories of ‘laws’ result in difficulties in describing, identifying and analysing human rights in plural environments. This volume studies how normative conflicts unfold when trapped in the aspirations of human rights and their local realizations. It reflects on how such tensions can be eased, while observing how and why they occur. The authors examine how obedience or resistance to the official law is generated through the interaction of a multiplicity of conflicting norms, interpretations and practices. Emphasis is placed on the actors involved in raising or decreasing the tension surrounding the conflict and the implications that the conflict carries, whether resolved or not, in conditions of asymmetric power movements. It is argued that legal responsiveness to state law depends on how people with different identities deal with it, narrate it and build expectations from it, bearing in mind that normative pluralism may also operate as an instrument towards the exclusion of certain communities from the public sphere. The chapters look particularly to expose the dialogue between parallel normative spheres in order for law to become more effective, while investigating the types of socio-legal variables that affect the functioning of law, leading to conflicts between rights, values and entire cultural frames.

Legal pluralism involves the coexistence of multiple forms of law. This involves state law, international law, transnational law, customary law, religious law, indigenous law, and the law of distinct ethnic or cultural communities. Legal pluralism is a subject of discussion today in legal anthropology, legal sociology, legal history, postcolonial legal studies, women's rights and human rights, comparative law, international law, transnational law, European Union law, jurisprudence, and law and development scholarship. A great deal of confusion and theoretical disagreement surrounds discussions of legal pluralismwhich this book aims to clarify and help resolve. Drawing on historical and contemporary studiesincluding the Medieval period, the Ottoman Empire, postcolonial societies, Native peoples, Jewish and Islamic law, Western state legal systems, transnational law, as well as othersit shows that the dominant image of the state with a unified legal system exercising a monopoly over law is, and has always been, false and misleading. State legal systems are internally pluralistic in various ways and multiple manifestations of law coexist in every society. This book explains the underlying reasons for and sources of legal pluralism, identifies its various consequences, uncovers its conceptual and normative implications, and resolves current theoretical disputes in ways that are useful for social scientists, theorists, jurists, and law and development scholars and practitioners.