Paul Schiff Berman. Global Legal Pluralism: A Jurisprudence of Law Beyond Borders

Abstract

Global Legal Pluralism: A Jurisprudence of Law Beyond Borders (GLP) by Paul Schiff Berman is a legal pluralist's contribution to the study of local and global regulation. In a tour de force, Berman articulates clear and concise arguments in support of adopting a pluralist lens (coined as a cosmopolitan pluralist perspective). He magnificently traverses the multiple and complex bodies of literature that seek to understand the various inchoate regulatory regimes, actors, norms, and processes, to simply state that we must harness the benefits of the overlapping legal authorities. The overlapping legal authorities for Berman produce legal hybridity, which is a product of globalization(s). At the outset, Berman states that he seeks to grapple with the complexities of law in a world where a single act or actor is potentially regulated by multiple legal or quasi-legal regimes (at 4). Our understanding of law, however, is wedded to the fictions of the autonomous, territorially distinct spheres and that [their] activities therefore fall under the legal jurisdiction of only one regime at a time (ibid.). The reality is somewhat different, in that we are regulated by multiple, converging, and divergent legal rules emanating from different sources of law. These laws originate from national, regional, and international legal norm-producing institutions. The diverse arenas of complex and overlapping legal authorities, Berman argues, are sites of conflict and confusion. These overlapping fields produce struggles and competition on how to assert jurisdiction to adjudicate which norms are applicable. Berman coins this process as jurisdictional hybridity (at 23). As a response to this type of hybridity, communities are either trying to solve these dilemmas through territorially based authority or seeking universal harmonization through world law. Conversely, Berman proposes harnessing the power of hybridity by suggesting not to dissolve, but rather to embrace it.