Polities and relative authorities

Abstract

Some of the most important challenges to connections between law and polity arise from pluralist phenomena of overlapping and interacting polities. This article argues that institutionalist theories of plurality and pluralism run out when their jurisdictional and doctrinal solutions lead one legal system to wield unjustifiable de facto control over the interaction of laws—and/or the domain in which the interaction occurs. In contexts where law’s normativity itself is at stake in divided polities, institutional solutions, even pluralist ones, do not determine how law can be normative at all. Instead, an account of “relative” authority, and the conditions of its legitimacy, requires authorities themselves to relate with one another in ways that might realize their procedural and substantive values for their subjects. This requires, however, that attention be placed not only on the role of authority (and not simply the abstract notion of authority as a legitimate power) but also upon the precise requirements upon those officials who claim authority over subjects in these divided, overlapping, or interacting polities.