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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

Abstract

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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

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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

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9 Duncan Kennedy, Three Globalizations of Law and Legal Thought, in The New Law and Economic Development: A Critical Appraisal 19, 3762 (David M. Trubek & Alvaro Santos eds., 2006).Google Scholar

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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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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

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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

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37 See H.L.A. Hart, The Concept of Law 56–57, 8485, 89–90 (1961).Google Scholar

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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, 8485.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