In Pursuit of Pluralist Jurisprudence

Description

The pluralist turn in jurisprudence has led to a search for new ways of thinking about law. The relationships between state law and other legal orders such as international, customary, transnational or indigenous law are particularly significant in this development. Collecting together new work by leading scholars in the field, this volume considers the basic questions about what would be an appropriate theoretical response to this shift: how precisely is it to be undertaken? Is it called for by developments in legal practice or are these adequately addressed by current legal theory? What normative challenges are raised, and what fresh promises might the pluralist turn hold? What distinctive insights can it offer for theorising about law? This book presents a rich variety of resources drawn from a number of theoretical approaches and demonstrates how they might be brought together to generate an increasingly important pluralist jurisprudence.

Nicole Roughan is the author of Authorities: Conflicts, Cooperation and Transnational Legal Theory (2013) and is working on a new monograph, Officials (forthcoming). She is a recipient of a 2016 Rutherford Discovery Fellowship from the Royal Society of New Zealand, to undertake a major research project on Jurisprudence without Borders. Andrew Halpin has published widely in areas of legal theory broadly conceived, exploring perspectives on law from other disciplines - logic, philosophy of language, politics, and economics - and confronting the impact of novel legal phenomena arising in a global context upon general theories of law. He coedited a collection of essays, Theorising the Global Legal Order (2009).

'This collection of high quality contributions is a must-read for anyone interested in the various challenges in theorising the phenomena of non-state law. It is the first book of its kind to recognize that while theoretical work on the emergence and prevalence of non-state law has grown exponentially over the last twenty years, to date there has been no sustained reflection on the methodological commitments and goals of such work. Roughan and Halpin have done remarkably well in drawing together a truly impressive range of scholars from diverse disciplines to begin such an investigation.' Michael Giudice, York University, Toronto 'What are the prospects of theories of law beyond, within and without state law? In particular, what novel conceptual and normative challenges do theories of legal pluralism grapple with? These and related questions are at the heart of this fascinating collection of essays, which offer a rich range of perspectives by leading theorists in this burgeoning field of inquiry.' Hans Lindahl, Tilburg Law School, the Netherlands