Abstract:
Preliminary Remarks: This book presents both advocacy and critique of a number of approaches to what is described as Pluralist Jurisprudence – theories of law moving beyond, within or without the state. Pluralist Jurisprudence, with its interest in phenomena such as customary law, international/regional law, transnational law, religious law, indigenous law and global law, takes seriously both the theoretical challenges of exploring these orders in themselves and the challenges they pose to state-centric/monist jurisprudential theories. The objective of collecting the present contributions together in a single volume is to provide a metatheoretical interrogation of pluralist jurisprudence, its scope, its aims, its methodologies, and its distinctiveness. This objective was advanced at a conference held at the Centre for Legal Theory in the Faculty of Law, National University of Singapore, in February 2015. Most of the chapters in this book first saw light as papers delivered at that conference. In addition, the book contains a paper originally delivered by Joseph Raz as the inaugural Singapore Symposium in Legal Theory in January 2014, a further chapter from Kirsten Anker commissioned for this book, and a joint reflection by the editors on the promises and pursuits of pluralist jurisprudence. The volume does not present a united front. Instead it features scholars offering a variety of approaches to pluralist jurisprudence yielding quite different insights but willing to engage directly in foundational questions. From sociologists of law to theorists of legal reasoning, from critical theorists to scholars of liberal constitutionalism, and from conceptual analysts to theorists of the rule of law, the contributors neither assume nor take for granted the significance of pluralist jurisprudence. Rather, they examine whether, how and to what ends it can or should be pursued. It is customary to use an editorial introduction to offer a frame that will illuminate the contributions and spell out their thematic connections to one another. In our view, however, the image of a frame is inapposite for an interrogation of pluralist jurisprudence. The subject matter of pluralist jurisprudence is itself contested and obscure, and the prospect of providing a clear picture bordered by a firm frame appears misguided, if not simply undeliverable. The title of the book perhaps conveys a more appropriate image.