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3 Hague J. on Rule L. 1 (2011)

handle is hein.journals/hagjuote3 and id is 1 raw text is: 1 The Rule of Law and Legal Pluralism in Development Brian Z. Tamanaha* After decades of disappointing progress in building the rule of law in societies that suffer from poorly functioning legal systems, the development community has turned its attention to legal pluralism. Legal pluralism is a prominent feature in many development contexts, with both negative and positive implications for the rule of law. The negative questions revolve around whether or to what extent the presence of multiple coexisting legal forms hampers or detracts from efforts to build the rule of law. The positive questions revolve around whether alternative legal forms in situations of legal pluralism might satisfy rule of law functions that failing state legal systems are unable to provide. This essay explores these ques- tions. After decades of disappointing progress in building the rule of law in societies that suffer from poorly functioning legal systems, the development community has turned its attention to legal pluralism. Legal pluralism is a prominent feature in many development contexts, with both negative and positive implications for the rule of law. The negative questions revolve around whether or to what extent the presence of multiple coexisting legal forms hampers or detracts from efforts to build the rule of law. The positive questions revolve around whether alternative legal forms in situations of legal pluralism might satisfy rule of law functions that failing state legal systems are unable to provide. This essay will explore these ques- tions. Two limitations of this exploration - the first involving application and the second involving theory - must be acknowledged at the outset. Rule of law devel- opment projects take place around the world in extraordinarily varied situations, each of which is unique. Observations about the interaction between the rule of law and legal pluralism, therefore, can be offered only as broad generalizations. Whether these generalizations apply, and what their concrete implications are, depend upon the circumstances at hand. What is relevant to isolated islands in * Professor of Law, Washington University in St. Louis School of Law, St. Louis, Missouri. Hague Journal on the Rule of Law, 3: 1-17, 2011 © 2011 TM-CASSER PRESS and Contributors doi:10.1017/S 1876404511100019

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