MEDITERRANEAN HYBRIDITY
Managing Committee:
• Olivier Moréte au (Louisiana)
• Baudouin Dupre t (CNRS/Ce ntre Jacque s-Be rque)
Brief Description:
Studies of Mediterranean legal and normative hybridity have been isolated, sporadic, and too often framed within narrow jurisdictional and disciplinary constraints. While anchored in legal study, our project addresses this lacuna by developing collaborative inter- and multi-disciplinary networks of experts—from law, anthropology, geography, sociology, etc—to generate a better understanding of the various legalities—state laws and non-state norms—in the Euro-Mediterranean region. While grounded in legal study, we will benefit from the diverse expertise of participants from a variety of jurisdictions and disciplines.The extraordinary legal and normative diversity of the Mediterranean region was produced in a complex history of conquest, colonisation, and social and legal diffusion across shifting and porous boundaries. Its various legal orders, past and present, include the Anglo-British, canonical, continental, Islamic, Ottoman, Roman, socialist, Talmudic traditions as well as various customary and trans-territorial legal traditions. This plurality of official laws, many born long before the establishment of modern nation-states, is complemented and further complicated by an equally diverse and dynamic normative pluralism. This legal and normative hybridity (‘hybridity’), the relationship of its legalities, has not received sufficient attention by either jurists or social scientists.
Our approach marries conceptual and empirical models from the legal and social sciences. Our focus encompasses both the state laws that are the domain of lawyers and the wider normative orders typically studied by social scientists. While rooted in legal science, the project will, insofar as is appropriate and practical, adopt an inter- and multi-disciplinary approach. In particular, it will both draw on and go beyond earlier analysis of (i) ‘mixed legal systems’, where diverse state laws emerge from different legal traditions, and (ii) ‘legal’ or normative pluralism. The focus of the former is typically limited to state law and mixtures of explicitly Western legal traditions. Study of the latter is rooted in empirical study, but is often focused on non-Western communities and rarely extends across state boundaries.
See also ‘The Mediterranean Hybridity Project: at the boundaries of law and culture’.
LEGAL PHILOSOPHY IN CONTEXT
Managing Committee:
• Seán Patrick Donlan (Limerick)
• Alessio Lo Giudice (Catania)• Margaret Martin (Western Ontario)
Brief Description:
Following a method familiar to comparatists, the project will explore legal philosophy in a number of legal traditions. Selected Reporters will complete reports examining legal philosophy in the appropriate jurisdictional contexts: historical, comparative, and social. Reporters will use a common questionnaire prepared by the Managing Committee and designed to produce a concise, but thick description of the legal traditions studied.
