What Is a Critical Legal Pluralism
![handle is hein.journals/cjls12 and id is 313 raw text is: What is a Critical Legal Pluralism?*
Martha-Marie Kleinhans**
Faculty of Law
McGill University
Roderick A. Macdonald***
Faculty of Law
McGill University
Abstract - Legal pluralism is a contemporary image of law that has been
advanced by sociolegal scholars in response to the dominant monist image of
law as derivative of the political state and its progeny. The pluralistic image
redirects law and society research toward the myriad normative orders outside
the circle of the Law. This essay considers the epistemological foundations of
both legal pluralism and the legal monist image of law against which its
proponents are reacting. It argues that contemporary pluralistic imaginations
rest on the same impoverished view of law and its subjects that sustains the
traditional claim that law comprises only the processes and institutions
This essay derives from several studies previously prepared by the authors. See e.g.
M.-M. Kleinhans, The Creative Self as a Site of Internormativity: A Non-
Essentialist Aesthetic Approach to Legal Pluralism (Paper presented to the Annual
Meeting of the Law and Society Association, 1996) [unpublished] [hereinafter
The Creative Self]; M.-M. Kleinhans, Critical Legal Pluralism: A Hermeneutic
Turn Through Narrative (Third Term Research Essay, Faculty of Law, McGill
University, 1996) [hereinafter A Hermeneutic Turn Through Narrative];
R. A. Macdonald, Multiple Selves and Legal Pluralism (Paper presented to the
Annual Meeting of the Law and Society Association, 1996) [unpublished];
R. A. Macdonald, Critical Legal Pluralism as a Construction of Normativity and
the Emergence of Law in A. Lajoie, ed., Theories et imergence du droit
(Montreal: Thdmis, 1998) [forthcoming] [hereinafter Critical Legal Pluralism]. It
goes without saying that the views expressed here are those of the authors and
should not in any way be attributed to the Law Commission of Canada.
Martha-Marie Kleinhans is a candidate in the B.C.L./LL.B. Joint-Degree
Programme, Faculty of Law, McGill University.
Roderick A. Macdonald is President of the Law Commission of Canada. He is also
F. R. Scott Professor of Constitutional and Public Law at the Faculty of Law and
the Institute of Comparative Law, McGill University (on leave).](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/cjls12&div=19&collection=journals&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
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What Is a Critical Legal Pluralism
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