Ubiquitous Law: Legal Theory and the Space for Legal Pluralism Book

"Ubiquitous Law" explores the possibility of understanding the law in dissociation from the State while, at the same time, establishing the conditions of meaningful communication between various legalities. This task is partly methodological and partly substantive. The book argues that the enquiry into the legal has been biased by the implicit or explicit presupposition of the State's exclusivity to a claim to legality as well as the tendency to make the enquiry into the law the task of experts, who purport to be able to represent the legal community's commitments in an authoritative manner. Very worryingly, the experts' point of view then becomes constitutive of the law and parasitic to and distortive of people's commitments. "Ubiquitous Law" counter-suggests a new methodology for legal theory, which will not be based on rigid epistemological and normative assumptions but rather on self-reflection and mutual understanding and critique, so as to establish acceptable differences on the basis of a commonality. Clearly, in order for this to be possible, a substantive theoretical basis is necessary. "Ubiquitous Law" goes on to establish the possibility of some degree of universal objectivity in relation to the law's existence and content, which will neither stifle and foreclose diversity nor radically under-prescribe and under-determine questions of law and rightness.Read More