Globalisation and legal pluralism

Abstract

For a long time the concept of legal pluralism was strictly rejected by legal theorists who insisted that the law of the nation state was the only relevant kind of law in modern society. But with the recognition that international law does not merge seamlessly with national laws and that a body of transnational law is emerging that has little to do with the law of nation states, the term has become acceptable. Legal pluralism is not a new phenomenon and includes far more than just national, international and transnational law. Research in legal anthropology has long since dealt with constellations of legal pluralism involving also customary legal orders, various types of religious law, and newly created local law. Legal pluralism resulted to a great extent from colonial expansions, missionary movements and migration. More recently, research has shown that legal pluralism is also common in industrial societies, where local communities and industrial and commercial offshoots create their own law. The transnational law that is emerging under the processes of globalisation of the second half of the 20th century therefore does not create legal pluralism, but adds to the already existing constellations of legal pluralism. Globalisation is a complex set of processes of increasing global connectedness differing in extent, intensity, velocity, and impact. Globalisation of law achieved quite high degrees of extension and intensity in earlier periods, especially during the period of colonisation since the late eighteenth century. The colonial empires introduced their laws in regions that stretched over all continents. New in the present process of globalisation is its velocity, made possible by modern transport and communication technology. New also is that far more mediating participants are involved than before. There is, however, no one universal development towards ever more connectedness. The process is full of contradictory developments, and as Held et al. warned, it is not possible to conclude from globalising developments in one domain that the same developments take place in other domains of social