The Future of Legal Pluralism

Abstract

Looking back on this collection of chapters on the comparative study of legal pluralism, we can summarize our findings by proposing that legal pluralism appears in or is related to at least three different social and political contexts. The first example is the presence of legal pluralism in imperial systems before and during the consolidation of nation states (Benton and Ross 2013). The second is the awareness of legal pluralism arising from the process of de-colonization and the slow and contested recognition of indigenous rights. The third example, and the one most fully discussed in this collection, is the recognition of different legal traditions in multicultural societies in which a majority agrees, possibly under considerable political and judicial pressure, to recognize that a minority community has a claim to its own distinctive legal traditions. This third case is seen to be the consequence of the globalization of labour markets and the development of permanent diasporic communities. Before attempting to conclude, we will comment briefly on these three examples.