A PLURALITY OF PLURALISMS –
UNDERSTANDING LEGAL PLURALISM
SYMPOSIUM
14 JANUARY 2013
UNIVERSITY OF LAPLAND
ROVANIEMI, FINLAND
The world and the world of law
are changing. Globalization and European integration have had a great impact on
virtually every area of human life – social, economic, cultural, political,
legal and technological. Simultaneously, we face mass migrations which inject
new legal ideas and competing world views into national legal cultures. These
developments are flanked by the rediscovery of old linguistic and ethnic
internal pluralities within nation-states. Law today is increasingly more than
state laws uniform to all, excluding other forms of law and administered by a
single set of formal institutions. The legal traditions of indigenous peoples
(eg, the Sámi, the Maori, etc) has also presented a renewed challenge to the
state-centred paradigm of law. In short, legal plurality is today’s reality.
Accordingly, debates about pluralism can no longer be confined the classical
anthropological legal pluralism in colonial or post-colonial settings. Today,
there are several forms of pluralism in law: constitutional, religious,
disciplinary, philosophical, etc.
Several transnational processes
have also transformed today’s legal professions: lawyers, attorneys, judges,
public officials, translators, and scholars. Accordingly, the requirements for
valid legal knowledge today are different from those of the past. The need for
a comparative and non-national understanding of our plural laws, both within
the state and without, and legal cultures is constantly growing. Accordingly,
knowing how to deal with legal pluralism in practice is increasingly
unavoidable. In order to be able to cope with pluralism, however, it is first
necessary to understand it. The theoretical and methodological challenge of
understanding legal pluralism is the scholarly core of this Symposium:
rethinking conventional state-centred approaches to understanding law in terms
of both methodology and substance.
Legal research (ie, the
doctrinal study of law) in Continental Europe has traditionally been, and
remains, nationally oriented. It is methodologically unequipped to deal with
contemporary legal pluralisms and overlapping normative orders. This Symposium
seeks to juxtapose and contrast theoretical and substantive perspectives on the
plurality of legal pluralisms.
The Symposium is organised by
the ULEP research project and LeCTra Research School
(the University of Lapland) in cooperation with M-EPLI (the University
of Maastricht).
Programme
Opening
9.30-9.45
Prof.
JAAKKO HUSA (Lapland)
Session 1:
9.45-10.15 Constitutional
Pluralism and Legal Pluralism: A Complex Relationship
Prof. NEIL WALKER, Regius
Chair of Public Law and the Law of Nature and Nations (Edinburgh)
10.15-10.45 “The State"
and Disciplinary Pluralism
Academy of Finland Fellow Dr. PETRI KOIKKALAINEN (Lapland)
10.45-11.15 Comments &
Discussion
11.15-11.45 Coffee Break
Session 2
11.45-12.15 Private Autonomy
and Legal Pluralism
Prof. JAN SMITS, Chair of
European Private Law, Director of M-EPLI (Maastricht)
12.15-12.45 Legal Positivism
in a Legal Pluralist World
Prof. MAURO ZAMBONI, Chair of
Jurisprudence (Stockholm)
12.45-13.15 Comments &
Discussion
13.15-14.15 Lunch
Session 3
14.15-14.45 The Nineteenth
and Twentieth Centuries: a Break in Legal Pluralism?
Professor HEIKKI PIHLAJAMÄKI, Chair
of Comparative Legal History (Helsinki)
&International Francqui Chair (Ghent & Brussels)
14.45-15.15 Here We Go
Again: Reflections on History and Hybridity
Lecturer Dr. SEÁN PATRICK DONLAN, President
of Juris Diversitas (Limerick)
15.15.-15.45 Comments &
Discussion
Closing
15.45-16.00
Prof. JUHA KARHU (Lapland)
The Symposium will be chaired
by Associate Professor PETRI KESKITALO (Lapland).
Contact & Further
Information:
Academic dimensions: Jaakko
Husa (jaakko.husa@ulapland.fi)
Practical dimensions: LL.M.
Tomi Tuominen (tomi.tuominen@ulapland.fi)
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