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Review Essay — Emmanuel Melissaris's Ubiquitous Law: Legal Theory and the Space for Legal Pluralism - [Emmanuel Melissaris, Ubiquitous Law: Legal Theory and the Space for Legal Pluralism; Ashgate Press, ISBN: 978-0-7546-2542-1; 178 pages; £ 55.00 (2009)]

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 March 2019

Derek McKee

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German Law Journal , Volume 11 , Issue 5 , 01 May 2010 , pp. 573 - 584
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Copyright © 2010 by German Law Journal GbR 

References

1 See Eugen Ehrlich, Fundamental Principles of the Sociology of Law (1913). See also Living Law: Reconsidering Eugen Ehrlich (Marc Hertog ed., 2009).Google Scholar

2 See Ehrlich, supra note 1, at 504.Google Scholar

3 See, e.g., Rudolf von Jhering, Law as a Means to an End (1877); Oliver Wendell Holmes, The Path of the Law, Boston L. Sch. Mag., Feb. 1897, at 1; Roscoe Pound, An Introduction to the Philosophy of Law (1922); Georges Gurvitch, L'Idée du droit social (1932).Google Scholar

4 See David Kennedy, A New Stream of International Law Scholarship, 7 Wis. Int'l L.J. 1, 8 (1988) (“Rather than a stable domain which relates in some complicated way to society or political economy or class structure, law is simply the practice and argument about the relationship between something posited as law and something posited as society.”). German Law JournalGoogle Scholar

5 Emmanuel Melissaris, Ubiquitous Law: Legal Theory and the Space for Legal Pluralism (2009) [hereinafter Melissaris, Ubiquitous Law].Google Scholar

6 The four articles are: The More the Merrier? A New Take on Legal Pluralism, 13 Soc. & Legal Stud. 57 (2004) [hereinafter Melissaris, More the Merrier]; The Limits of Institutionalised Legal Discourse, 18 Ratio Juris 464 (2005); The Chronology of the Legal, 50 McGill L.J. 839 (2006); Perspective, Critique, and Pluralism in Legal Theory, 57 N. Ireland Legal Q. 597 (2006).Google Scholar

7 Duncan Kennedy, Form and Substance in Private Law Adjudication, 89 Harv. L. Rev. 1686 (1976) [hereinafter Kennedy, Form and Substance]; Gunther Teubner, Substantive and Reflexive Elements in Modern Law, 17 L. & Soc'y Rev. 239 (1983); Peer Zumbansen, Law After the Welfare State: Formalism, Functionalism and the Ironic Turn of Reflexive Law, 56 Am. J. Comp. L. 769 (2008).Google Scholar

8 Jürgen Habermas, Between Facts and Norms: Contributions to a Discourse Theory of Law and Democracy, 388–446 (1992).Google Scholar

9 Duncan Kennedy, Three Globalizations of Law and Legal Thought, in The New Law and Economic Development: A Critical Appraisal 19, 37–62 (David M. Trubek & Alvaro Santos eds., 2006).Google Scholar

10 On private law, see Kennedy, Form and Substance, supra note 7. See also Ian Macneil, The New Social Contract: An Inquiry into Modern Contractual Relations (1980). Review Essay – Legal Plural ismGoogle Scholar

11 See, e.g., Marc Galanter, Why the Haves Come out Ahead, 9 L. & Soc'y Rev. 95 (1974).Google Scholar

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13 For the classic overview and assessment of this literature, see Sally Engle Merry, Legal Pluralism, 22 L. & Soc'y Rev. 869 (1988).Google Scholar

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15 See Le Pluralisme Juridique, supra note 14; Moore, supra note 14; M.B. Hooker, Legal Pluralism: An Introduction to Colonial and Neo-Colonial Laws (1975); John Griffiths, What is Legal Pluralism?, 24 J. Legal Pluralism 1 (1986); Merry, supra note 13.Google Scholar

16 Boaventura da Sousa Santos, The Law of the Oppressed: The Construction and Reproduction of Legality in Pasargada, 12 L. & Soc'y Rev. 5 (1977).Google Scholar

17 See Harold Berman, Law and Revolution: The Formation of the Western Legal Tradition (1983).Google Scholar

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20 See Gordon Hewart, The New Despotism (1929); F. A. Hayek, The Road to Serfdom 80–96 (1944).Google Scholar

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24 Id. at 361–67.Google Scholar

25 Id. at 356–61. See also Scott Burris, Michael Kamper & Clifford Shearing, Changes in Governance: A Cross- Disciplinary Review of Current Scholarship, 41 Akron L. Rev. 1 (2008).Google Scholar

26 See Peer Zumbansen, Transnational Legal Pluralism, 1 Transnat'l Legal Theory (forthcoming 2010), available at http://ssrn.com/abstract=1542907 (last visited May 20, 2010) [hereinafter Zumbansen, Transnational].Google Scholar

27 For a prescient account of the triumph of substance over form at a global scale, see Philip C. Jessup, Transnational Law (1965).Google Scholar

28 See Gunther Teubner, Global Bukowina: Legal Pluralism in the World Society, in Global Law Without a State 3 (Gunther Teubner ed., 1997) [hereinafter Teubner, Global Bukowina].Google Scholar

29 See Santos, New Common Sense, supra note 19, at 403–55.Google Scholar

30 See Saskia Sassen, Territory, Authority, Rights: From Medieval to Global Assemblages (2006).Google Scholar

31 David Kennedy, The Mystery of Global Governance, 34 Ohio N.U. L. Rev. 827, 848 (2008).Google Scholar

32 Santos, New Common Sense, supra note 19; Teubner, Global Bukowina, supra note 28; William Twining, Globalisation and Legal Theory (2000); Andreas Fischer-Lescano & Gunther Teubner, Regime-Collisions: The Vain Search for Legal Unity in the Fragmentation of Global Law, 24 Mich. J. Int'l L. 999 (2004); Boaventura de Sousa Santos & César A. Rodríguez-Garavito, Law, Politics and the Subaltern in Counter-Hegemonic Globalization, in Law and Globalization from Below: Towards a Cosmopolitan Legality 1 (Boaventura de Sousa Santos & César A. Rodríguez-Garavito eds., 2005); Zumbansen, Transnational, supra note 26.Google Scholar

33 See Roderick A. Macdonald, Here, There… and Everywhere: Theorizing Legal Pluralism; Theorizing Jacques Vanderlinden, in Étudier et enseigner le droit: hier, aujourd'hui et demain: Études offertes à Jacques Vanderlinden 381 (Lynn Castonguay & Nicholas Kasirer eds., 2006).Google Scholar

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36 Robert M. Cover, The Supreme Court, 1982 Term – Foreword: Nomos and Narrative, 97 Harv. L. Rev. 4, 9–10 (1983) [hereinafter Cover, Nomos and Narrative].Google Scholar

37 See H.L.A. Hart, The Concept of Law 56–57, 84–85, 89–90 (1961).Google Scholar

38 Habermas, supra note 6, at 27.Google Scholar

39 Melissaris, Ubiquitous Law, supra note 5, at 76.Google Scholar

40 See Hart, supra note 37 at 239–40; Melissaris, Ubiquitous Law, supra note 5, at 9.Google Scholar

41 Melissaris, Ubiquitous Law, supra note 5, at 9–11.Google Scholar

42 Id. at 79.Google Scholar

43 Id. at 61–71.Google Scholar

44 Id. at 9. Hart said that his account of law is “morally neutral and has no justificatory aims.” Hart, supra note 37, at 240.Google Scholar

45 Hart, supra note 37, at 56–57, 84–85.Google Scholar

46 Id. at 109–19. However, as Melissaris points out, Hart added a subtle normative twist when he justified secondary rules in terms of certainty, flexibility and efficiency. Compare Melissaris, Ubiquitous Law, supra note 5, at 12–15 with Hart, supra note 37, at 94–98.Google Scholar

47 See Lon L. Fuller, Positivism and Fidelity to Law – A Reply to Professor Hart, 71 Harv. L. Rev. 630, 638–48 (1958).Google Scholar

48 Griffiths, supra note 15. For a related approach, see Franz von Benda-Beckmann, Who's Afraid of Legal Pluralism?, 47 J. Leg. Pluralism 37 (2002).Google Scholar

49 Melissaris, Ubiquitous Law, supra note 5, at 29–30.Google Scholar

50 Id. at 30–33.Google Scholar

51 Id. at 33–35.Google Scholar

52 Id. at 43.Google Scholar

53 Id. at 72–76.Google Scholar

54 Id. at 46. While Melissaris recognizes that the word “law” may be laden with ideological baggage—such as its association with the state—he correctly points out that it should be possible to cast off this baggage.Google Scholar

55 Id. at 49–50.Google Scholar

56 Id. at 115.Google Scholar

57 See id. at 80–90.Google Scholar

58 See id. at 89.Google Scholar

59 See id. at 91.Google Scholar

60 See Clifford Geertz, Local Knowledge: Fact and Law in Comparative Perspective, in Local Knowledge: Further Essays in Interpretive Anthropology 167 (1983).Google Scholar

61 See Melissaris, Ubiquitous Law, supra note 5, at 93–100. See also Robert Cover, Violence and the Word, 95 Yale L.J. 1601 (1985).Google Scholar

62 Melissaris, Ubiquitous Law, supra note 5, at 104–106.Google Scholar

63 Id. at 76, 115.Google Scholar

64 See id. at 51–55.Google Scholar

65 Cover, Nomos and Narrative, supra note 36. Cover also appears to endorse a kind of political liberalism, in which the state and its judges maintain peace by choosing which of these competing legalities to nurture and which ones to kill. Melissaris suggests a re-reading of Cover in which this “jurispathic” function of state legality is recast as a trans-contextual discussion of law. Instead of espousing an order imposed through violence (as Cover sometimes seems to do), Melissaris suggests that we read Cover as being concerned with the possibility of meaningful communication across legal contexts. See Melissaris, Ubiquitous Law, supra note 5, at 55–59.Google Scholar

66 Melissaris, Ubiquitous Law, supra note 5, at 109.Google Scholar

67 Id. at 115.Google Scholar

68 See id. at 123.Google Scholar

69 Id. at 123–24.Google Scholar

70 Id. at 115.Google Scholar

71 See id. at 43.Google Scholar

72 Santos, New Common Sense, supra note 19, at 473.Google Scholar

73 Id. at 456–78. This chapter of Toward a New Common Sense is based on an earlier article: Boaventura de Sousa Santos, Law: A Map of Misreading. Toward a Postmodern Conception of Law, 14 J. L. & Soc'y 279 (1988).Google Scholar

74 Santos, New Common Sense, supra note 19, at 416–41.Google Scholar

75 Id. at 112–14.Google Scholar

76 Gunther Teubner, The Two Faces of Janus: Rethinking Legal Pluralism, 13 Cardozo L. Rev. 1443, 1451 (1992).Google Scholar

77 Id. at 1453–61.Google Scholar

78 See Teubner, Global Bukowina, supra note 28.Google Scholar

79 See Fischer-Lescano & Teubner, supra note 32.Google Scholar

80 See Melissaris, Ubiquitous Law, supra note 5, at 35–39.Google Scholar

81 See Melissaris, More the Merrier, supra note 6, at 73–75. In that article, Melissaris gave Teubner credit for developing a discourse-based approach to legal pluralism that was able to manage the tension between description and normativity, observation and participation. While more critical of Santos, Melissaris also gave Santos credit for his attention to the relations among dispersed legalities.Google Scholar