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8 UC Irvine L. Rev. 141 (2018)
Legal Pluralism in a Globalized World

handle is hein.journals/ucirvlre8 and id is 149 raw text is: 










         Introduction: Legal Pluralism in a

                       Globalized World



                               Janine  Ubink*


     This issue of the UC  Irvine law Review results from a symposium   on legal
pluralism, co-organized by the Commission  on Legal Pluralism and the University
of California, Irvine School of Law in August  2016. The  Commission   on Legal
Pluralism was established in 1978 by the International Union of Anthropological
and  Ethnological  Sciences  (IUAES)   and  is affiliated with the International
Association of Legal Science (IALS). The Commission   aims to further knowledge
and understanding  of legal pluralism, with a focus upon theoretical and practical
problems  resulting from the interaction of different types of law, such as state law,
international and transnational law, religious law, and customary law. Among its
main  activities are the organization of international symposia; the initiation and
encouragement   of Regional Working  Groups  in different parts of the world; and
the organization and delivery of courses and summer schools on legal pluralism.'
     Legal pluralism is generally defined as the presence of more than one legal
order in a social field.2 It was a response to legal centralist ideology that law is and
should be the law of the state and that other normative orderings are hierarchically
subordinate to state law.3 The concept also reacted to the trend in classical legal
anthropology  until the 1950s or '60s to edit out the state in their studies that
usually focused on small, isolated, untouched societies.4 Researchers approached
the customary legal systems of these societies as autonomous legal systems, largely
disregarding the colonial government and  its actors; they were thus unconcerned
with any interaction between state and local normative systems and the resulting


Janine Ubink is a professor of Law, Governance and Development at Leiden University and the
President of the Commission on Legal Pluralism.
    1.  See CitiZenship, Legal Pluralism and Governance in the Age of GlobaliZation, COMMISSION ON
LEGAL  PLURALISM, http://commission-on-legal-pluralism.com/nl/home [https://perma.cc/6JLK-
6GVL] (last visited Mar. 21, 2018).
    2.  John Griffiths, What is Legal Pluralism?, 24 J. LEGAL PLURALISM & UNOFFICIAL L. 1, 1
(1986).
    3.  Franz von Benda-Beckmann, Who's Afraid of Legal Pluralism?, 47 J. LEGAL PLURALISM &
UNOFFICIAL L. 37, 37 (2002).
    4.  Keebet von Benda-Beckmann, Noot 24: Rechtspluralisme, in DE SOCIALFi WERKING VAN
RECHT: EEN  KENNISMAKING   MET DE  RECHTSSOCIOLOGIE EN  RECHTSANTROPOLOGIE   740
(J. Griffiths ed., 1996).


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