CONFERENCE ANNOUNCEMENT: In Pursuit of Pluralist Jurisprudence

Thursday & Friday, 5-6 February 2015, Faculty of Law, National University of Singapore

Existing jurisprudential analyses of law beyond the state have focused upon substantive questions surrounding the institutional, normative and systemic character of non-state law, both on its own and in interaction with state law. That scholarship, however, has revealed a significant gap surrounding questions of jurisprudential methodology, purpose and scope. These are the broad themes the conference will aim to address.

PROGRAMME: The programme has been arranged to cover the following sessions.

Thursday, 5 Feb 2015

SESSION I (Chair: Andrew Harding)

Do Lawyers Need a Theory of Legal Pluralism? Roger Cotterrell (Queen Mary University of London)
Tribal Executive Power in the Settler States: Legal and Political Theories of Inter-indigenous Pluralism. Kirsty Gover (University of Melbourne)

SESSION II (Chair: Terry Nardin)

Three Concepts of Legal Pluralism: A Jurisprudential Assessment. Mattias Kumm (The WZB Berlin Social Science Center)
Law and Legitimacy for Global Institutions. Pavlos Eleftheriadis (University of Oxford)

SESSION III (Chair: Maksymilian Del Mar)

Legal Pluralism and the Rule of Law. Martin Krygier (University of New South Wales)
The Many Uses of Law: Connecting an Instrumental and an Interactional Perspective. Sanne Taekema (Erasmus University Rotterdam)

Friday, 6 Feb 2015

SESSION IV (Chair: Tony Anghie)

Metaphors of the New Legal Theory. Margaret Davies (Flinders University)
Towards a Genealogical Understanding of Transnational Law. Detlef Von Daniels (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin)

SESSION V (Chair: Kevin Walton)

Legal Theory and Global Justice: The Gap. Neil Walker (University of Edinburgh)
Collectivist Authority and International Customary Law. Stefan Sciaraffa (McMaster University)

SESSION VI (Chair: Nicole Roughan)

Law and Recognition-Towards a Relational Concept of Law. Ralf Michaels (Duke University)
Against a General Jurisprudence of Pluralism. Cormac Mac Amhlaigh (University of Edinburgh)

ARTICLE: Methodological pluralism and legal comparison

A new interesting article From social and political philosophy eJournal.

Methodological Pluralism and Legal Comparison

Roberto Scarciglia 

University of Trieste
May 1, 2014

in R. Scarciglia and W. Menski (eds.)m Islamic Symbols in European Courts, Cedam-Kluwer, 2014, pp.21-34. 
Abstract:      

The aim of this paper is to show how the methodological tools used in much more comparative analyses are not suitable to study complex phenomena as the diversity and legal implications of religious factors on the decision of the courts.

Click here for more details.

CHAPTER: Corradetti's What Does Cultural Difference Require of Human Rights?

Cambridge University Press has published a book 'Human Rights. The Hard Questions', C.Holder and D.Reidy, eds. (2013) with interesting chapter of Claudio Corradetti 'What Does Cultura Difference Requir of Human Rights?'

Abstract:      

With this essay I analyse the notion of cultural difference with a reference to moral and epistemic relativism. I then explain how the contradictory nature of relativism leads to the notion of cultural difference and then to the idea of cultural pluralism. Cultural pluralism does not only acquire significance in view of moral arguments but is the result of the fulfillment of socio-political standards for mutual cooperation. The latter can be achieved only if the potential conflict among different comprehensive views is defused. According to my views, in order to overcome the potential conflict among comprehensive views of the good, one has to recognize the normative force of one fundamental principle of human rights - the principle of equal liberty of communication. The formulation of such a principle is sensitive to the critical-genealogical reconstruction of the primary meaning of human rights as a concept originating from the end of the Wars of Religion (1598). What I will claim is that the principle of equal liberty of communication is required by the same “fact of pluralism” (Rawls 1993). Contrary to its original meaning as equality of conscience, the principle of equal liberty of communication is to be interpreted today in accordance to its most extensive public participatory form, that is, as equality of participation. One crucial aspect of the proposed argument is showing how there is a strict interconnection between the principle of equal liberty of communication and the role of reflective judgment in constructing pluralism along exemplar lines. It is believed that the model of public reason suggested here will prove to be both more inclusive and stable than those grounded on forms of presumed neutrality.

Full text of the chapter is avaliable here.

ARTICLE: Palombella on Global Legislation and its Discontents

Gianluigi Palombella’s ‘Global legislation and its discontents’ is available online at Cadmus:

‘Legislation’ is flourishing in the global sphere from a large number of sources, in the lack of a unified system. Current redefinitions of legality/validity, or attempts at a global constitution deserve some scrutiny and should cope with a global sphere legislation bearing unprecedented features: issued from deracinated sources, bearing new scope and functions, developing ‘managerial’/regulatory modes, cancelling the distinction vis-à-vis 'administration', electing functional rationalities with 'limited responsibility', loosing connection to the comprehensive well being of social communities. Despite the search for devices of accountability ‘global’ legislation remains a source of discontents. The promises of legal form are at stake in keeping alive the distinction between global decision making and universalizability. The future of global legislation (and its legitimacy) shall depend not only on shared criteria of legality, but also on how it shall interfere against the autonomy of less-than-global orders: that is, on the justice-related, legal quality of the relationships between the plurality of orders.

ARTICLE: Hesselink on Private Law Principles, Pluralism and Perfectionism

Martijn W Hesselink's 'Private Law Principles, Pluralism and Perfectionism' is available on SSRN:

This paper discusses the legitimacy of general principles of private law as they have been formulated recently by the Court of Justice of the European Union and proposed by the European Commission. It addresses challenges from different strands in political theory including liberal perfectionism, political liberalism and Habermasian discourse theory. There are four specific lessons to be learned from these theories. First, the quest should not be for very general and abstract principles with a very broad scope, but rather for principles of an intermediate level of abstraction and a limited scope, which could explain and bring coherence to a set of rules or a legal doctrine, but not to the whole law of contract. Private law principles which are too general and sweeping would risk to neglect the need for internal diversification within private law. Secondly, these private law principles should be situated on the non-constitutional level of ordinary private law, subject to the constitution (including its horizontal effect) which in turn must be compatible, in order to be legitimate, with the political principles of justice that the EU polity has given itself. Thirdly, the CJEU, although an institution that is not in itself a less legitimate lawmaker than the legislator, also when it comes to private law principles, has a strong duty to explain itself and to provide good reasons for adopting general principles of civil law and for choosing certain principles, especially if these principles happen to be controversial, either from a comparative law point of view or along any of the other axes along which European citizens and European Member States may differ. Finally, there is no legitimate place for strong perfectionism in the deliberation on fundamental European private law principles; any private law perfectionism should be either local (in specific doctrines like unfair exploitation) or thin (limited to values like rationality). However, as long as we remain cautious is all these respects, the quest for general private law principles is perfectly legitimate. There is no contradiction per se in seeking to find general private law principles in a pluralist world.