Law In The Age Of Pluralism

Law in the Age of Pluralism contains a collection of essays on the intersection of legal and political philosophy. Written within the analytical tradition in jurisprudence, the collection covers a wide range of topics, such as the nature of law and legal theory, the rule of law, the values of democracy and constitutionalism, moral aspects of legal interpretation, the nature of rights, economic equality, and more. The essays in this volume explore issues where law, morality and politics meet, and discuss some of the key challenges facing liberal democracies. Marmor posits that a liberal state must first and foremost respect people's personal autonomy and their differing, though reasonable, conceptions of the good and the just. This basic respect for pluralism is shown to entail a rather skeptical attitude towards grand theories of law and state, such as contemporary constitutionalism or Dworkin's conception of 'law as integrity'. The values of pluralism and respect for autonomy, however, are also employed to justify some of the main aspects of a liberal state, such as the value of democracy, the rule of law, and certain conceptions of equality. The essays are organized in three groups: the first considers the rule of law, democracy and constitutionalism. The second group consists of several essays on the nature of law, legal theory, and their relations to morality. Finally, the collection concludes with essays on the nature of rights, the limits of rights discourse, and the value of economic equality.

The book gathers the general report and the national reports presented at the XXth General Congress of the IACL, in Fukuoka (Japan), on the topic “Debating legal pluralism and constitutionalism: new trajectories for legal theory in the global age”. Discussing the major contemporary changes occurring in and problems faced by domestic legal systems in the global age, the book describes how and to what extent these trends affect domestic legal orderings and practices, and challenges the traditional theoretical lenses that are offered to tackle them: constitutionalism and pluralism. Combining comparative law and comparative legal doctrine, and drawing on the national contributions, the general report concludes that most of the classic tools offered by legal doctrine are not appropriate to address most of today’s practical and theoretical global legal challenges, and as such, the book also offers new intellectual tools for the global age.

"Abstract Global legal pluralism has become one of the leading analytical frameworks for understanding and conceptualizing law in the twenty-first century"--

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.

Law and Religious Pluralism in Canada seeks to elucidate the complex and often uneasy relationship between law and religion in democracies committed both to equal citizenship and religious pluralism. Leading socio-legal scholars consider the role of religious values in public decision making, government support for religious practices, and the restriction and accommodation by government of minority religious practices. They examine such current issues as the legal recognition of sharia arbitration, the re-definition of civil marriage, and the accommodation of religious practice in the public sphere.

This book considers how judicial review can be improved to strike the appropriate balance between legislative and judicial power.

This book is devoted to the study of the interplay between religious rules and State law. It explores how State recognition of religious rules can affect the degree of legal diversity that is available to citizens and why such recognition sometime results in more individual and collective freedom and sometime in a threat to equality of citizens before the law. The first part of the book contains a few contributions that place this discussion within the wider debate on legal pluralism. While State law and religious rules are two normative systems among many others, the specific characteristics of the latter are at the heart of tensions that emerge with increasing frequency in many countries. The second part is devoted to the analysis of about twenty national cases that provide an overview of the different tools and strategies that are employed to manage the relationship between State law and religious rules all over the world.

Previous efforts at legal development have focused almost exclusively on state legal systems, many of which have shown little improvement over time. Recently, organizations engaged in legal development activities have begun to pay greater attention to the implications of local, informal, indigenous, religious, and village courts or tribunals, which often are more efficacious than state legal institutions, especially in rural communities. Legal pluralism is the term applied to these situations because these institutions exist alongside official state legal systems, usually in a complex or uncertain relationship. Although academics, especially legal anthropologists and sociologists, have discussed legal pluralism for decades, their work has not been consulted in the development context. Similarly, academics have failed to benefit from the insights of development practitioners. This book brings together, in a single volume, contributions from academics and practitioners to explore the implications of legal pluralism for legal development. All of the practitioners have extensive experience in development projects, the academics come from a variety of backgrounds, and most have written extensively on legal pluralism and on development.