Emmanuel Melissaris, Ubiquitous Law: Legal Theory and the Space for Legal Pluralism (2009) (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2009) [ISBN 978-0-7546-2542-1] [Ubiquitous Law]. All page references in parenthesis are to this book.

Abstract

A broad assortment of contemporary approaches to legal and normative complexity have challenged state law’s claim of dominance and exclusivity. In Ubiquitous law: Legal Theory and the Space for Legal Pluralism (2009), Emmanuel Melissaris similarly seeks to ground the ‘legal’ in what he calls ‘shared normative commitments’. As with much ‘legal pluralism’, his focus on normativity rejects long-established conventional concepts of law. Indeed, for Melissaris, state law may not even properly qualify as ‘law’. But understood as a descriptive theory of normativity, the dynamic legal-normative web he outlines has much to recommend it. It is certainly superior to the continuing narrow concentration of jurisprudes on state law and law-like regimes. Less convincing is Melissaris’ prescriptive suggestion, with ‘critical legal pluralists’, that illustrating the degree to which legal-normative reform occurs beyond the state and its laws promises liberation. Shared normative commitments do not necessarily result in popular control as existing social structures and power relationships remain. We may be ensnared rather than emancipated. On the whole, however, Melissaris has made a sophisticated and substantial contribution to our understanding of legal and normative plurality. His book deserves to be widely read.