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How Jean-Guy Belley Thinks: A Translator's Note

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2013

Nicholas Kasirer
Nicholas Kasirer
Affiliation:
Quebec Court of Appeal, Centre for Private and Comparative Law, McGill University, Montreal, QC, Canada
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Extract

Why has Quebec proved such a fertile ground for the study of legal pluralism over the last generation? It is not that formalism in law is any less tenacious in Quebec than elsewhere, or that the state-made law is held in lower esteem. If anything, the fabled cult of enactment that characterizes modern civilian methodology has been exacerbated in the run-up to the adoption of the Civil Code of Québec and the twenty years since that moment. The mixed nature of Quebec legal sources, given that mixité is seen as much as a historical fact as the basis for a way of knowing law, cannot explain the wealth of scholarly attention devoted to diversity in law. Whether Quebec's brand of pluralism for law comes from factors such as linguistic and cultural diversity, an ongoing contact with Aboriginal law, or a special experience with religious law is a matter of ongoing speculation. But in the final analysis, it is not unfair to think that legal pluralism has flourished in Quebec because of the work of a handful of imaginative scholars who have invested their talent in this intellectual project.

Professor Jean-Guy Belley is plainly one of their number. His work as a theorist of legal pluralism is celebrated in Quebec and well read in France. Yet his prodigious scholarly output is less well known elsewhere in Canada, where that work would likely be understood to have special relevance. Indeed, over the past ten or so years, Professor Belley has placed increasing emphasis on Anglo-American legal scholarship and common-law sources in his teaching and thinking about law. The translation of the foregoing essay has therefore been prepared at once as a respectful homage to a friend and colleague and in the hope that, in a modest way, it might encourage a wider readership for his important work.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Law and Society / La Revue Canadienne Droit et Société , Volume 26 , Issue 2 , August 2011 , pp. 253 - 255
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Law and Society Association 2011

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References

1 Macdonald, Roderick, “Here, There … and Everywhere: Theorizing Legal Pluralism; Theorizing Jacques Vanderlinden,” in Étudier et enseigner le droit: hier, aujourd'hui et demain—Etudes offertes à Jacques Vanderlinden, ed. Castonguay, Lynne et al. (Montreal: Yvon Blais, 2006), 381Google Scholar.

2 See Noreau, Pierre, “La nation sans la culture ou l'art facile de se conter des histoires,” in Le Pays de tous les Québécois,ed. Sarra-Bournet, Michel et al. (Montreal: VLB Éditeur, 1998), 131, 139–41Google Scholar.

3 See, e.g., Coutu, Michel, “Juridicité et normativité dans la théorie sociojuridique de R.A. Macdonald,” Revue générate de droit 28 (1997), 337CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 For some perspective on his own views see Belley, Jean-Guy, “Les juristes universitaires francophones et le progrès de la justice sociale au Québec,” Cahiers de Droit 42 (2001), 563CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and “Le pluralisme juridique de Roderick Macdonald: une analyse séquentielle,” in Théories et émergences du droit: pluralisme, surdétermination et effectivité,ed. Lajoie, Andrée et al. (Montreal: Thémis, 1998), 57Google Scholar.

5 See, e.g., his edited collection Le droit soluble. Contributions québécoises à l'etude de l'internormativité (Paris: LGDJ, 1996)Google Scholar, and in particular his essay “Le contrat comme phénomène d'internormativité,” 195–232. Belley's entry “Pluralisme juridique,” published by France's learned CNRS in the canonical Dictionnaire encyclopédique de théorie et de sociologie du droit, 2nd ed. (Paris: LGDJ, 1993), 446Google Scholar, is a plain sign of the influence of his ideas in Europe.

6 “Quelle culture juridique pour le 21e siècle?” Canadian Bar Review 80 (2001), 1Google Scholar. The paper appeared in the proceedings of a colloquium held to mark the 125th anniversary of the Supreme Court of Canada.

7 See Belley, Jean-Guy, “Le rayonnement intellectuel de Jean Carbonnier au Québec: le succès d'estime d'un honnête homme,” McGill Law Journal 54 (2009), 407CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Belley's, thesis, Conflit social et pluralisme juridique en sociologie du droit (Université de Paris II, 1977)Google Scholar, appeared at roughly the same time that Carbonnier published Sociologie juridique(Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1978)Google Scholar. Carbonnier refers to the thesis as a welcome break from the practice in legal pluralism whereby “la doctrine d'expression française et d'expression anglaise … se sont développées dans une ignorance réciproque” (363).

8 See, e.g., Belley, Jean-Guy, “La pensée positiviste et ses tourments,” in Transformation de la culture juridique québécoise,ed. Melkevik, Bjarne et al. (Quebec, QC: Presses de l'Université Laval, 1998), 237Google Scholar; “L'avenir du droit et des juristes: trois scénarios,” Revue générate de droit 30 (2000), 501Google Scholar.

9 See, e.g., his extended preface to Roy, Alain, Le contrat de mariage réinventé. Perspectives socio-juridiques pour une réforme (Montreal: Thémis, 2002), ixGoogle Scholar.

10 Belley, Jean-Guy, Le contrat entre droit, économie et société (Cowansville, QC: Yvon Blais, 1995)Google Scholar.

11 Belley, Jean-Guy, “Le programme d'enseignement trans-systémique du droit à l'Universite McGill,” Jurisprudence—Revue critique 1 (2010), 93Google Scholar.

12 As is plain in the portions of a special issue of the McGill Law Journal pointing to the foundations of this teaching experiment in legal pluralism, notably Janda, Richard, “Toward Cosmopolitan Law,” McGill Law Journal 50 (2005), 967, 971, et seqGoogle Scholar.

13 Belley, Jean-Guy, “L'orgueil de la société par actions,” in Les sept péchés capitaux et le droit privé, ed. Fortin, Véronique et al. (Montreal: Thémis, 2007), 49Google Scholar.

14 Asking how Jean-Guy Belley thinks might be undertaken in the spirit of Douglas, Mary's inquiry in How Institutions Think (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1986)Google Scholar, which is a clear influence on Belley's essay translated here. One suspects that Douglas, 's work, especially Purity and Danger(1966; reprint, New York: Routledge Classics, 2008)Google Scholar, is one of the many strands that make up Jean-Guy Belley's legal pluralism.