State, society and the relations between them: Implications for the study of legal pluralism

Theoretical Inquiries in Law

Volumn 9, Issue 2, 2008, Pages

  Shahar, Ido ^a  

^a HEBREW UNIVERSITY OF JERUSALEM   (Israel)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 46749090872     PISSN: None     EISSN: 15653404     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2202/1565-3404.1192     Document Type: Review

References (124)

1. Gordon R. Woodman, The Idea of Legal Pluralism, in LEGAL PLURALISM IN THE ARAB WORLD 3, 4 (Baudouin Dupret, Maurits Berger & Laila al-Zwaini eds., 1999).
2. For similar definitions, see, for example, Sally Engle Merry, Legal Pluralism, 22 LAW & SOC'Y REV. 869, 870 (1988);
3. John Griffiths, What Is Legal Pluralism?, 24 J. LEGAL PLURALISM & UNOFFICIAL L. 1, 2 (1986). A discussion of definitional, and conceptual issues related to legal, pluralism will follow below.
4. Griffiths, supra note 1, at 1.
5. See Merry, supra note 1.
6. Chris Fuller, Legal Anthropology, Legal Pluralism and Legal Thought, 10 ANTHROPOLOGY TODAY 9, 12 (1994).
7. John Griffiths, Legal Pluralism and the Theory of Legislation - With a Special Reference to the Regulation of Euthanasia, in LEGAL POLYCENTRICITY: CONSEQUENCES OF PLURALISM IN LAW 201, 201 (Hanne Peterson & Henrik Zahle eds., 1995).
8. Brian Z. Tamanaha, The Folly of the "Social Scientific" Concept of Legal Pluralism, 20 J.L. & SOC'Y 192, 202 (1993).
9. See, e.g., Simon Roberts, Against Legal Pluralism: Some Reflections on the Contemporary Enlargement of the Legal Domain, 42 J. LEGAL PLURALISM & UNOFFICIAL L. 95(1998).
10. For an overview of this debate, see Laura Nader, The Anthropological Study of Law, 67 AM. ANTHROPOLOGIST 3, 4-6 (1965).
11. Id. at 5.
12. Griffiths, supra note 1.
13. Tamanaha, supra note 6.
14. Griffiths, supra note 1, at 1.
15. Merry, supra note 1, at 869.
16. Griffiths, supra note 1, at 1.
17. Moore defines a semi-autonomous social field as a social group that has "rule-making capacities, and the means to induce and coerce compliance; but it is simultaneously set in a larger social matrix which can, and does, affect and invade it, sometimes at the invitation of persons inside it, sometimes at its own instance." Sally Falk Moore, Law and Social Change: The Semi-Autonomous Social Field as an Appropriate Object of Study, 7 LAW & SOC'Y REV. 719, 724-25 (1973).
18. Griffiths, supra note 1, at 2.
19. Jacques Vanderlinden, Le pluralisme juridique: essai de synthèse, in LE PLURALISME JURIDIQUE 19 (John Gilissen ed., 1971).
20. Griffiths, supra note 1, at 4-5.
21. Id. at 13.
22. Id. at 38.
23. Id. at 12.
24. Moore, supra note 15.
25. Griffiths, supra note 1, at 30-31.
26. Id. at 9-10.
27. On the Ottoman Millet system, see Benjamin Braude, Foundation Myths of the Millet System, in CHRISTIANS AND JEWS IN THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE: THE FUNCTIONING OF A PLURAL SOCIETY 70 (Bernard Lewis & Benjamin Braude eds., 1982).
28. BARRY M. HOOKER, LEGAL PLURALISM: AN INTRODUCTION TO COLONIAL AND NEO- COLONIAL LAWS (1975).
29. Griffiths, supra note 1, at 10.
30. Tamanaha, supra note 6, at 196.
31. Id. at 198 (quoting Griffiths, supra note 1, at 4).
32. Id. at 193, 205.
33. Id. at 206. This expression is borrowed from Marc Galanter, Justice in Many Rooms: Courts, Private Ordering and Indigenous Law, 19 J. LEGAL PLURALISM 1,17 (1981).
34. Id. at 201.
35. Id. at 193.
36. Warnings against too broad a conceptualization of law, which results in a conflation of legal order with social and cultural orders, may be found, for example, in Boaventura de Sousa Santos, Law: A Map of Misreading. Toward a Post-Modern Conception of Law, 14 J.L. & SOC'Y 279, 279 (1987);
37. Gunther Teubner, The Two Faces of Janus: Rethinking Legal Pluralism, 13 CARDOZO L. REV. 1443, 1444 (1992);
38. Carol J. Greenhouse, Legal Pluralism and Cultural Difference, 42 J. LEGAL PLURALISM & UNOFFICIAL L. 61, 64-65 (1998);
39. Sally F. Moore, Certainties Undone: Fifty Turbulent Years of Legal Anthropology, 1949-1999, 7 J. ROYAL ANTHROPOLOGICAL INST. 95, 106 (2001).
40. Tamanaha published one more influential article on legal pluralism: Brian Z. Tamanaha, A Non-Essentialist Version of Legal Pluralism, 27 J.L. & SOC'Y 296 (2000).
41. Interestingly, it appears that over the years, Tamanaha underwent a change of heart with regard to legal pluralism. In this later essay he appears to be joining the ranks of the "legal pluralists," while promoting a "non-essentialist" approach to legal pluralism. There are certain similarities between Tamanaha's later approach, which is influenced by the works of Boaventura de Sousa Santos and Gunther Teubner, and the constructionist approach that I am proposing here, but there are also some significant differences. A comprehensive discussion of Tamanaha's second article on legal pluralism, however, is beyond the scope of this Article. For the writings of de Sousa Santos and Teubner on legal, pluralism, see the sources cited supra note 34. For a discussion of Tamanaha's "non-essentialist" approach to legal, pluralism, see Franz Von-Benda-Beckmann, Who's Afraid, of Legal Pluralism?, 47 J. LEGAL PLURALISM & UNOFFICIAL L. 37, 45 (2002).
42. See, e.g., Philip Abrams, Notes on the Difficulty of Studying the State, 1 J. HIST. SOC. 58 (1988);
43. George Steinmetz, Culture and the State, in STATE/ CULTURE: STATE FORMATION AFTER THE CULTURAL TURN 1, 4-5 (George Steinmetz ed., 1999).
44. BOB JESSOP, STATE THEORY: PUTTING CAPITALIST STATES IN THEIR PLACE 340 (1990).
45. Michael Mann, The Autonomous Power of the State: Its Origins, Mechanisms and Results, 25 EUR. J. SOC. 185, 185 (1984).
46. See Akhil Gupta, Blurred Boundaries: The Discourse of Corruption, the Culture of Politics, and the Imagined State, 22 AM. ETHNOLOGIST 375 (1995);
47. ICHEL-ROLPH TROUILLOT, GLOBAL TRANSFORMATIONS: ANTHROPOLOGY AND THE MODERN WORLD 79 (2003).
48. John Bendix, Bartell Oilman, Bartholomew H. Sparrow & Timothy P. Mitchell, Going Beyond the State?, 86 AM. POL. SCI. REV. 1007, 1009 (1992).
49. MARK J. SMITH, RETHINKING STATE THEORY 7 (2000).
50. Timothy P. Mitchell, The Limits of the State: Beyond Statist Approaches and their Critics, 85 AM. POL. SCI. REV. 77 (1991).
51. This point illustrates the striking analogy between the debate concerning the definition of law and the debate concerning the definition of the state. Whereas the difficulty of defining the state has led some political scientists to abandon the concept of state in favor of the broader concept of "political system," the difficulty of defining "law" has led some socio-legal scholars to call for the abandonment of the concept of law in favor of the broader concept of "normative order." For such calls, see, for example, Roberts, supra note 7;
52. Bouduin Dupret, Legal Pluralism, Normative Pluralism and the Arab World, in LEGAL PLURALISM IN THE ARAB WORLD 29, 31 (Baudouin Dupret, Maurits Berger & Laila al-Zwaini eds., 1999).
53. This was the title of a seminal article by Theda Skocpol, which appeared, in a volume of collected, essays under the same title. See Theda Skocpol, Bringing the State Back In: Strategies of Analysis in Current Research, in BRINGING THE STATE BACK IN 3 (Peter Evans, Dietrich Rueschemeyer & Theda Skocpol eds., 1985).
54. Id.
55. Eric Nordlinger, Taking the State Seriously, in UNDERSTANDING POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT 353 (Myron Weiner & Samuel P. Huntington eds., 1987).
56. Mitchell, supra note 42, at 88.
57. See, e.g., Merry, supra note 1, at 870;
58. Gordon R. Woodman, Ideological Combat and Social Observation: Recent Debates About Legal Pluralism, 42 J. LEGAL PLURALISM & UNOFFICIAL L. 21, 32-40 (1998);
59. Ann Griffiths, Legal Pluralism, in INTRODUCTION TO LAW AND SOCIAL THEORY 289, 290 (Raza Banakar & Max Travers eds., 2002);
60. Emmanuel Melissaris, The More the Merrier: A New Take on Legal Pluralism, 13 SOC. LEGAL STUD. 57, 77 n.1 (2004).
61. Indeed, Griffiths does call on social scientists to examine state law, but only for the purpose of revealing its lack of social impact. See John Griffiths, Is Law Important?, 54 N.Y.U. L. REV. 339 (1979).
62. Galanter, supra note 31, at 17-18.
63. Moore, supra note 15.
64. Indeed, Mitchell claims that the "statist" approach usually adopts a "legalistic" perspective. See Mitchell, supra note 42, at 92.
65. RONALD DWORKIN, TAKING RIGHTS SERIOUSLY (1978);
66. RONALD DWORKIN, LAW'S EMPIRE (1986).
67. See also Ruth Halperin-Kadari, Rethinking Legal Pluralism in Israel: The Interaction Between the High Court of Justice and the Rabbinical Courts, 20 TEL-AVIV U. L. REV. 683, 724 n.130 (1997) (Hebrew).
68. Mitchell, supra note 42, at 95-96.
69. See Woodman's discussion of the legal pluralism, that occurs within the boundaries of state law, which he terms "state legal pluralism." Woodman, supra note 48, at 51-52.
70. See also Von-Benda-Beckmann, supra note 35, at 64-65. One school of thought that was engaged in the study of state legal pluralism was the Nordic school of legal polycentricity, discussed below.
71. Mitchell, supra note 42, at 79.
72. Id. at 90.
73. E.g., Bob Jessop, Institutional (Re)turns and the Strategic Relational Approach, 33 ENV'T & PLANNING 1213 (2001);
74. Bob Jessop, Liberalism, Neoliberalism, and Urban Governance: A State-Theoretical Perspective, 34 ANTIPODE 452 (2002).
75. Mitchell, supra note 42.
76. Bob Jessop, Bringing the State Back In (Yet Again): Reviews, Revisions, Rejections and Redirections, 11 INT'L REV. SOC. 149 (2001).
77. Nader, supra note 8, at 5.
78. For a similar argument, see Woodman, supra note 48, at 44-45.
79. Nurit Tsafrir, Arab Customary Law in Israel: Sulha Agreements and Israeli Courts, 13 ISLAMIC L. & SOC'Y 76 (2006).
80. For example, if a university promulgates an internal code that bars handicapped persons, Jews or women from enrolling, it is more than likely that this code will, be nullified by the (liberal) state, either in the courts or through legislation.
81. On new forms of governance, see R. A.W. Rhodes, The New Governance: Governing Without Government, 44 POL. STUD. 652 (1998);
82. Jon Pierre, Introduction to DEBATING GOVERNANCE: AUTHORITY, STEERING AND DEMOCRACY 1 (Jon Pierre ed., 2000).
83. See Louis W. Pauly & Edgar Grande, Reconstituting Political Authority: Sovereignty, Effectiveness and Legitimacy in a Transnational Order, in COMPLEX SOVEREIGNTY: RECONSTITUTING POLITICAL AUTHORITY IN THE TWENTY FIRST CENTURY 3, 5-6 (Edgar Grande & Louis Pauly eds., 2005);
84. TROUILLOT, supra note 39, at 83.
85. TROUILLOT, supra note 39, at 89-90.
86. The thriving fields of conflict of laws and private international law attest to this.
87. Hanne Patersen & Henrik Zahle, Introduction to LEGAL POLYCENTRICITY: CONSEQUENCES OF PLURALISM IN LAW, supra note 5, at 3, 8.
88. Id.
89. For a critical discussion of the notion of legal polycentricity, see Gordon Woodman, Book Review, 39 J. LEGAL PLURALISM & UNOFFICIAL L. 155 (1997)
90. (reviewing LEGAL POLYCENTRICITY: CONSEQUENCES OF PLURALISM IN LAW, supra note 5).
91. For a different approach to assessing the strength of legal pluralism, see Yüksel Sezgin, Theorizing Formal Pluralism: Quantification of Legal Pluralism for Spatio-Temporal Analysis, 50 J. LEGAL PLURALISM & UNOFFICIAL L. 101 (2004).
92. Jacques Vanderlinden, Return to Legal Pluralism: Twenty Years Later, 28 J. LEGAL PLURALISM & UNOFFICIAL L. 149 (1989) [hereinafter Vanderlinden, Return];
93. Jacques Vanderlinden, Vers une nouvelle conception du pluralisme juridique, 53 REVIEW DE LA RECHERCHE JURIDIQUE -DROIT PROSPECTIF 573 (1993) [hereinafter Vanderlinden, Vers une nouvelle conception].
94. Vanderlinden, Return, supra note 74, at 153.
95. "la situation, pour individu, dans laquelle des méchanismes juridiques relevant d'ordonnancements différents sont susceptibles de s'appliquer à cette situation." Vanderlinden, Vers une nouvelle conception, supra note 74, at 583.
96. Of course, this criterion emphasizes processes of dispute resolution. It does not refer to other aspects and functions of legal systems.
97. The term "legal system," as I use it here, does not designate a fully coherent and systematized legal order, but rather suggests that there are connections and interdependencies between the system's components. For a similar conceptualization of "legal, system," see Von-Benda-Beckmann, supra note 35, at 63.
98. BLACK'S LAW DICTIONARY 681 (8th ed. 2004).
99. See, e.g., David E. Steinberg, The Motion to Transfer and the Interest of Justice, 66 NOTRE DAME L. REV. 443 (1990);
100. Kimberley J. Norwood, Shopping for a Venue: The Need for More Limits on Choice, 50 U. MIAMI L. REV. 267 (1996);
101. Andreas F. Lowenfeld, Forum Shopping, Antisuit Injunctions, Negative Declarations, and Related Tools of International Litigation, 91 AM. J. INT'L L. 314 (1997).
102. Nevertheless, in recent years legal, scholars appear to have become more tolerant of this phenomenon. See Kevin M. Clermont & Theodore Eisenberg, Exorcising the Evil of Forum-Shopping, 80 CORNELL L. REV. 1507 (1995);
103. ANDREW S. BELL, FORUM SHOPPING AND VENUE IN TRANSNATIONAL LITIGATION (2003).
104. See, e.g., ATHALIA MOLOKOMME, CHILDREN OF THE FENCE: THE ALIMONY OF EXTRA- MARITAL CHILDREN UNDER LAW AND PRACTICE IN BOTSWANA (1991).
105. This personal status regime is a vestige of the Ottoman Millet system. Daniel Friedmann, The Effect of Foreign Law on the Law of Israel: Remnants of the Ottoman Period, 10 ISR. L. REV. 192, 206 (1976);
106. Mark Galanter & Jayanth Krishnan, Personal Law Systems and Religious Conflicts: A Comparison of India and Israel, in RELIGION AND PERSONAL LAW IN SECULAR INDIA: A CALL TO JUDGMENT 270 (Geral J. Larson, ed., 2001).
107. On the Ottoman Millet system, see Braude, supra note 25.
108. See Aharon Layish, Muslim Religious Jurisdiction in Israel, 1 ASIAN & AFR. STUD. 49 (1965).
109. See NORMAN BENTWICH, LEGISLATION OF PALESTINE, 1918-1925, at 14 (1926).
110. See Suhad Bishara & Aida Toma-Suliman, Personal Status and Family Laws, in NGO REPORT: THE STATUS OF PALESTINIAN WOMEN CITIZENS OF ISRAEL 66 (1997), available at http://www.arabhra.org/publications/reports/PDF/ cedaw.pdf.
111. The joint endeavor was titled "Working Group for Equality in Personal Status Matters." On this group, see Ido Shahar, Practicing Islamic Law in a Legal Pluralist Environment: The Changing Face of a Muslim Court in Present Day Jerusalem 128-30 (2006) (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Ben Gurion University, on file with author).
112. On this struggle, see Ido Shahar, Legal Reform, Interpretive Communities and the Quest for Legitimacy : A Contextual Analysis of a Legal Circular, in LAW, CUSTOM AND STATUTE IN THE MUSLIM WORLD: STUDIES IN HONOR OF AHARON LAYISH 198 (Ron Shaham ed., 2007).
113. Family Court Law (Amendment No. 5), 5755-1995, S.H. 18.10.
114. See Shahar, supra note 86, at 136-46.
115. See Tamanaha, supra note 35;
116. Melissaris, supra note 48.
117. De Sousa Santos, supra note 34.
118. Teubner, supra note 34.
119. Tamanaha, supra note 35.
120. Melissaris, supra note 48.
121. Griffiths, supra note 1.
122. SALLY FALK MOORE, SOCIAL FACTS AND FABRICATIONS: CUSTOMARY LAW ON KILIMANJARO, 1880-1980, at 15 (1986).
123. See Shahar, supra note 86.
124. See, e.g., Ido Shahar, Legal. Pluralism and the Study of Shari'a Courts, 15 ISLAMIC L. & SOC'Y 112 (2008).