Legal Pluralism and Cultural Diversity

Le 12 avril 2014, les Chefs coutumiers Kanak ont adopté dans leurs aires coutumières respectives la "Charte du Peuple Kanak - socle commu des valeurs et principes fondamentaux de la civilisation Kanak". Ce texte a ensuite été solennellement proclamé à Nouméa le 26 avril en présence de l'ensemble des autorités coutumières. Ce travail de constitution de socle commun des valeurs et de rédaction engagé par le Sénat coutumier Kanak suscite l'admiration des personnes versées dans les questions de décolonisation, de justice, de mémoire et de développement.
Ainsi, l'émergence de la revendication autochtone dasn un nouveau contexte socio-politique est d'abord une entreprise décolonisatrice (I). C'est pourquoi la démarche autochtoniste bouleverse les principes constitutionnels et les institutions politiques et adminsitratives de la Nouvelle-Calédonie (II).
Le présent texte discute du contexte de l'adoption de la Charte, de l'organisation du peuple Kanak et propose des réflexions sur ce nouveau pas vers l'autodétermination des Kanak.

La sharía y el derecho islámico son dos referentes fundamentales para la organización y supervivencia de las comunidades musulmanas en los países occidentales. Les han permitido configurar de una manera informal, pero decisiva, los márgenes de actuación y de buenas prácticas para el cumplimiento de los preceptos del islam en la diáspora. Este libro ofrece un estudio de las demandas de autorregulación jurídica de las minorías religiosas en Occidente. Una voluntad de autorregulación que surge de la necesidad de contar con un sistema normativo propio basado en la cultura y la religión de sus miembros, y que se enmarca en el denominado pluralismo jurídico de base religiosa, que aborda la posible coexistencia de dos o más sistemas u ordenamientos normativos. A través de estas propuestas y las controversias a las que ha dado lugar, se manifiesta la implosión jurídica que la diversidad cultural y religiosa ha provocado en las sociedades occidentales y la necesidad de comprenderla para, quizá, aceptarla y, en su debido momento, incluirla.

Studies in legal pluralism have contributed to the framing and understanding of legal systems in the developing world. This article utilises the conceptual framework of legal pluralism as an all embracing field in which the inter-connectedness of state and non-state laws can be more deeply explored, and through which grassroots realities including local actors' internalisation of international human rights laws can be analysed. In terms of 'pluralism' this article examines some of the numerous units of non-state law or regulation operating on the ground in addition to or instead of formal state law. In this way, the role and contribution of studies in legal pluralism within the global north/global south debate becomes one that elucidates the resilience of non-state laws and norms in the face of contemporary global changes and state legal reforms. Working from a grounded theory paradigm, and drawing on the discourse of women victims of violence, accused and their families in eight states of India, the data presented here highlight various aspects of the limits of law's capabilities, the power of informal laws operating on the ground and the relationship of formal law with family and community non-state laws and norms. 1 They further highlight how through the lens

Tekst je prikaz knjige Thomas Simon (ur.), Konflikt und Koexistenz. Die Rechtsordnungen Südosteuropas im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert, band II: Serbien, Bosnien-Herzegowina, Albanien, Max-Planck-Institut für europäische Rechtsgeschichte - Vittorio Klostermann, Frankfurt na Majni, 2017, str. 629.

The paper argues that the legal order in the Mughal period was neither constituted nor exhausted by the state; and law was never a unilateral instrument for the imposition of the will of the state. There was a wide variety of legal orders which were selectively appropriated by litigants to better serve their interests and aspirations, and we come across repeated instances of forum shopping in our period of study. Even so, the multiple juridical bodies were not hermetically sealed from each other, and the tendency to view them as distinct and discrete entities doesn’t quire capture the tensions and complexities that defined the legal order. This was particularly the case with the state legal order, and its juridical relevance was crucially linked to its ability to converse and engage with local norms, values, and relations of power. There is, therefore, a need to bring the state back in, without necessarily bringing back the myth of its intentionality, uniformity and absolute authority. I have suggested that the state’s cutting edge was not based on imperial initiatives, but was a function of its entangled relations with the local elites, community leaders, heads of caste and corporate bodies, muhalla chiefs, etc

In this brief study, the author seeks to demonstrate the necessity of reviewing the role played by territory in aboriginal self-government. In part one, he examines how territorial and non-territorial (personal) forms of power structures emerge in multi-community or multi-national states. He then turns, in part two, to the role that each such model should play in aboriginal governance in Canada. Based upon the observation that the coexistence of aboriginal and non-aboriginal populations within shared territories is becoming a permanent part of the demographic evolution
of Québec and Canada, the author proposes that the time has come to go beyond the concept of territoriality, without abandoning it, in making constitutional space for aboriginal self-government.
For the majority of aboriginal peoples, the land and its resources form the bedrock of governmental jurisdiction, which in turn gives rise to control over land and the relationships between people and such land. Nonetheless, strict obedience to the diktats of territoriality may engender an impasse harmful to the capacity of aboriginal peoples to govern themselves, especially when significant numbers of community members live outside the community land base or, still, in cases where communities without any territory of their own cannot realistically lay claim to any exclusive land rights on a short-term basis. For some of these communities, the settlement of territorial issues may not resolve the fact of their minority dispersal in non-aboriginal territories. In their case, personal rather than territorial jurisdictions will prove to be a permanent solution. The author goes on to emphasize that when non-members living on aboriginal territories do not enjoy all the political rights inherent in Canadian citizenship, the personality principle could apply so as to shield them from the application of certain aboriginal laws that do not affect aboriginal control over the land. The personality principle would in this case consolidate the democratic legitimacy of aboriginal self-government and facilitate the harmonious coexistence of populations without compromising aboriginal peoples control over the exercise of their historic rights.
***
Dans cette brève étude, l'auteur s'attache à démontrer qu'il faut revoir la place du territoire dans la mise en œuvre de l’autonomie gouvernementale autochtone. Ii analyse, dans la première partie du texte, les conditions d'émergence de formes territoriales et non territoriales (personnelles) d'organisation du pouvoir dans les États pluricommunautaires ou multinationaux. Il se penche ensuite, dans la seconde partie, sur le rôle que devrait jouer chacun de ces modèles dans la gouvernance autochtone au Canada. Partant du constat que 1'enchêtrement spatial des populations allochtones et autochtones s'inscrit durablement dans l'évolution démographique du Québec et du Canada, l'auteur avance qu'il est devenu impérieux de dépasser la territorialité sans la renier pour aménager l’espace constitutionnel nécessaire à l’autonomie politique autochtone.
Pour la majorité des peuples autochtones, la terre et ses ressources constitueront le support de compétences gouvernementales se traduisant par un contrôle de la terre et des rapports entre les personnes et la terre. En revanche, une obédience stricte aux diktats de la territorialité pourrait créer une impasse préjudiciable à la capacité des peuples autochtones de se gouverner; surtout lorsqu'un nombre significatif de leurs membres vivent en dehors du territoire communautaire ou encore dans le cas des communautés qui n'ont pas de territoire propre et qui ne pourront, de manière réaliste, se voir reconnaitre des droits exclusifs sur des terres à court terme. Pour certaines de ces communautés, le règlement de la question territoriale pourrait ne pas suffire à mettre fin à leur dispersion minoritaire en milieu allochtone de sorte que, dans ce cas, les compétences personnelles plutôt que territoriales s'avéreront une solution permanente. L'auteur fait enfin valoir que lorsque les non-membres vivant en territoire autochtone ne jouissent pas de tous les droits politiques inhérents à la citoyenneté canadienne, le principe de personnalité pourrait s'appliquer de manière à soustraire ces non-membres à l'application des certaines lois autochtones n'influant pas sur le contrôle autochtone de la terre. Le principe de personnalité viendrait ici conforter la légitimité démocratique du pouvoir autochtone et faciliter la coexistence harmonieuse des populations sans compromettre la mainmise des peuples autochtones sur l'exercice de leurs droits historiques.""

Deliberative democracy is widely associated with a public sphere that is more inclusive of cultural and religious minority groups than that established by a model of politics as interest aggregation. But it has also been criticized for stipulating unjust terms for this political inclusion, and for being insufficiently responsive to identity group-based claims. Such challenges have prompted much internal debate about the validity and the practical consequences of different norms and mechanisms of deliberative democracy. Models of public deliberation less beholden to Habermasian discourse ethics, I argue, offer a more promising response to theses multicultural challenges. There is much in deliberative democracy that conduces to an inclusive and diverse public sphere. The theory's grounding in communicative as opposed to strategic and instrumental action (Habermas 1984) requires that we respect citizens' moral differences and not seek to bracket these from democratic political life. The requirement that political decision-making be based on public deliberation and the respectful exchange of shared reasons — rather than on mere interests or sheer power — would seem to encourage diverse citizens

The essays contained in this volume deal with some important questions concerning the relationship between the world of custom and the world that can be most precisely defined as cultivated, which found its expression in writing. For the medieval and modern periods, these questions involve a close relationship between the educated, elaborated and tendentially abstract viewpoint expressed through writing, and the one substantially tied to social practices, intimately connected to oral tradition and custom. It is not by chance that customs played a primary part in the hierarchy of sources which a judge theoretically had to take into consideration in his jurisprudential activity.  The contact with the world of custom and tradition allows to see some of its most significant features, above all in the many judiciary cases produced by the ever more intrusive and classificatory activity of the ecclesiastical and secular institutions. It is possible to appreciate this aspect in many spheres of social and political life; however, it comes out most clearly in the complicated matter of marriage.
The emergence of tradition, understood above all in the sense of custom and of a legal order characterized by orality and mediation, is therefore a historical and cultural phenomenon filtered in the modern period through the activity of secular and ecclesiastical institutions that aimed at regulating and constraining it within legal parameters reflecting new social and political instances. And the interpretative tool of legal anthropology helps the historian understand its scope and meanings. This collection of essays essentially intends to follow this line of interpretation, in an attempt to grasp through a varied and complex selection of judiciary cases the emergence of social practices that had long been grounded in custom and oral transmission.

Contemporary public as well as academic discourse on personal law in India has over the years engaged with the issues of its inadequacies, judicialisation and uniformity. This discourse has paid scant attention to the functioning of the law and the complexities of a multicultural nation-state committed to the idea of political secularism. This paper engages with the mahallu system of Malabar and sheds light on how decision-making in Muslim personal law is a process embedded in quotidian micro-politics, sectarian dynamics, social censure and affect. By tracing a triple talaq case in its ethnographic details we show that love (or lack of it), kinship expectations and community authority come together in resolving a conjugal dispute that does not lead to a straight path of legal interpretation but into a labyrinth of micro-politics of local religious factions and authority. The paper shows that the non-state quasi-legal institutions that come under the rubric of the mahallu system comprise of a particular kind of legal pluralism which is complex and replete with multilayered relations of power. This also brings to fore the binary and the play between what is considered to be legal and legitimate.

Dans l'empire colonial, les magistrats français sont confrontés à des droits et coutumes pluralistes, étroitement liés à la religion et souvent éloignés de leur propre culture juridique. Ils ne peuvent les ignorer car certains de ces magistrats sont compétents pour appliquer ces normes locales dans des litiges impliquant des autoch-tones. Dans ces conditions, comment accèdent-ils à cette connaissance juridique ? C'est ce processus d'apprentissage que cet article se propose ici d'analyser d'un point de vue historique, tout en s'interrogeant sur ses implications actuelles, en particulier en Nouvelle Calédonie. In the colonial empire, the French magistrates are confronted with pluralistic laws and customs, closely linked to the religion and often distant from their own legal culture. They cannot ignore them because some of these magistrates are competent to apply these local standards in disputes involving natives. In these circumstances , how do they have access to this legal knowledge? This article will attempt to describe and analyze, from a historical perspective, this mechanism and its current implications, in particular in New Caledonia.

Like many of their ethnic neighbours, the Bashada are agro-pastoralists and have been living relatively isolated from the modern world until one or two decades ago.
Recently more and more changes have been introduced from the outside which are having an increasing impact on the daily lives of the people.
One of these transformations is the introduction of formal education. The construction of numerous schools and increasing pressure by the government to enroll more children, especially girls, is forcing the Bashada to respond and react.
The paper shows that so far the Bashada have been able to be selective in accepting what they consider useful and in rejecting what seems harmful to their children, as well as to the core values of their culture.

"This anthropological study describes a specific form of mediation, as it is practiced in Ethiopia (Northeast Africa) by members of the Oromo and Amhara ethnic groups. It introduces elders as male household-heads in their advanced ages, who settle conflicts and arrange marriages for the members of the junior generations. There are not only 'easy' cases dealt with, which one might assume to be too 'unimportant' for state courts or other juridical institutions but also aggravated cases that may affect the wider group or that have inter-ethnic dimensions. The study uses specific case studies of marriage, bride abduction, physical injury and homicide for illustration. Within the book, reference is made to speech-act-theory and the 'new ethnographic' approach related to it. Both rhetoric strategies and non-verbal means of communication are discussed, such as postures, gestures, spatial arrangements, numerical symbolisms, or the deliberate use of certain kinds of dress and of material objects. Special attention is paid to the use of ritual in mediation procedures. The book brings to light significant regularities that are inherent to the different types of elders' proceedings. Peculiar elements and phases can be distinguished that re-occur in all types of processes analysed in the study. This cannot exclusively be explained by reference to 'process', as a general idea of people negotiating law. It moreover hints to the existence of a formal 'procedure', which follows its own rules. Accordingly, a change of perspective 'from process to procedure' is suggested in the book's programmatic title.

http://www.harrassowitz-verlag.de/title_2776.ahtml

Book Order US:
http://www.amazon.com/From-Process-Procedure-Aethiopistische-Forschungen/dp/3447066113/

Book Order Germany:
http://www.amazon.de/Process-Procedure-Mediation-Formality-Ethiopia/dp/3447066113/
http://www.buchhandel.de/detailansicht.aspx?isbn=9783447066112"

In the United States, much of our social life is shaped by how we address and manage cultural difference. Perhaps nowhere is the management of multi-culturalism more important than in legal proceedings. While there are many ways in which cultural accommodations are made at trials (e.g., see Berk-Seligson, 2002, regarding the use of interpreters during judicial proceedings), this special issue is concerned with just one: the use of cultural expert testimony as evidence in legal conflicts that invoke cultural difference. The articles in this issue address six aspects of its implementation which must be resolved to improve its efficacy: knowing the role of expert testimony in a cultural defense, reconciling the job of expert witness with other professional roles, relating to defendants vs. informants, employing legal concepts that have little anthropological acceptance, producing testimony in changing historical and political contexts, and helping judges understand culture.

Being a home to more than 80 ethnic groups, Ethiopia has to balance normative diversity with efforts to implement state law across its territory.
This volume explores the co-existence of state customary, and religious legal forums from the perspective of legal practitioners and local justice seekers. It shows how the various stake holders' use of negotiation, and their strategic application of law can lead to unwanted confusion, but also to sustainable conflict resolution, innovative new procedures and hybrid norms. The book thus generates important knowledge n the conditions necessary for stimulating a cooperative co-existence of different legal systems.
An open access version is available as PDF through the link below.

Este trabajo examina las diferencias entre el multiculturalismo y el interculturalismo a nivel prescriptivo y extrae sus consecuencias para pensar el pluralismo jurídico. Los dos enfoques aceptan la necesidad del pluralismo jurídico formal para hacer igualitarias las relaciones entre grupos culturales en el interior del Estado. Sin embargo, tienen consecuencias distintas desde una perspectiva prescriptiva. Los fundamentos normativos del multiculturalismo —la tolerancia y la coexistencia entre grupos culturales y la salvaguarda de los valores liberales— se traducen en un pluralismo jurídico desigual que establece grandes limitaciones en términos personales, territoriales y materiales para los sistemas jurídicos de grupos culturales no liberales. En contraste, el interculturalismo, al apostar por el respeto, la convivencia, el diálogo y el aprendizaje mutuo entre grupos culturales, y al aceptar la legitimidad de distintas concepciones de “vida buena”, permite pensar un pluralismo jurídico igualitario, con mecanismos institucionales para la cooperación entre sistemas jurídicos.

Legal norms have always crossed borders, be these national, cultural or functional, but recent legal and social changes have made the study of the circumstances under which law and norms are transferred from one context or locus to another more important than ever before. Post-colonial, supranational and global processes have not only drawn attention to this legal 'movement' or transfer but have also raised challenges to conventional conceptions of legal spaces and borders, and these feature alongside legal pluralism at the forefront of contemporary comparative legal studies debates. These two concepts - transfer and pluralism - find themselves inextricably linked by their conceptual relevance to different legal orders and to issues of conflict, contestation and interaction in terms of law, society, culture and legal culture, but are rarely (if ever) conceptualized with relation to each other. This paper submits that framing normative transfer in terms of legal pluralism adds another dimension to each concept, and attempts to illustrate this with reference to the example of nation state-internal normative pluralism in post-colonial societies with indigenous communities.

https://global.oup.com/academic/product/dealing-with-diversity-9780190121136?cc=gb&lang=en

Contemporary liberal societies are marked by a certain degree of diversity indicated by coexistence of multiple ideas, doctrines, beliefs and cultural practices. But a complex and differentiated tradition of political thought like liberalism, despite its fundamental reliance on values like autonomy and toleration, adheres minimally to the principle of diversity. The triumphant position of the liberal individual dwarfs the chance of letting diversified existences fit within its boundary. However, in the face of the general depiction of liberalism as an ideology intending to guarantee creation of basic values like peace, pluralism, equality, diversity becomes a fact "that should be faced". Thus, the author in this volume works out an exhaustive theoretical classification of liberalism into comprehensive pro-autonomy, pro-toleration, political pro-autonomy, and political pro-toleration. With a detailed discussion on the different definitions of liberalism, the author conceptualises a normative framework, for liberalism to deal with the existence of the concept of diversity. The book thus presents a comprehensive account of critical evaluation of these four variants of liberalism with regard to diversity and their ability to deal with diversity in a proper way.

In remote villages of the Eastern Highlands of Papua New Guinea, where official village courts and other state institutions are absent, local leaders routinely hold unofficial village courts to maintain law and order. They base their decisions on local perceptions of order and justice, all the while emulating elements of state justice and constantly referring to the state as the source of their legitimacy. As these unofficial judicial institutions historically emerged as a convergence of local patterns of leadership with colonial concepts of order, they neither form a completely new nor completely autochthonous method of conflict settlement, but are an example of para-statehood, in which local leaders take on state functions in the absence of the state.

In her well-known article about the "semi-autonomous social field" Sally Falk Moore (1978) discusses the relationship between state law and social change. She shows most eloquently how legal rules interfere in local contexts and effect changes; it is just that the process of change is not effected necessarily as envisaged by the particular law-maker. This plea for such research has been enthusiastically taken up in the sociology of law literature. It is exemplified in numerous case studies of conflicts out of court. Concepts such as legal pluralism, integral plurality or multiplicity of legal systems derive from this development (cf. Merry, 1988; Starr and Collier, 1989).
There is however no real reason why the model of " semi-autonomous social field " should be limited to the out of court milieu as Moore tacitly did without even explaining this limitation. Such a limitation assumes a priori that the legal institutions can be relatively rigid regarding a particular socio-cultural network of personal relationships that is more independent than the law-maker believes. It is indeed possible to find examples of court's pre-formed images about the out of court milieu that tell us as much about the daily court routine as about the social environment that these images are supposed to duplicate.

Las sociedades occidentales actuales se han visto transformadas por múltiples factores como la globalización, las migraciones internacionales o las nuevas tecnologías, que han aumentado el grado de complejidad con el que abordar el estudio de cualquiera de sus elementos, para lo que ahora se precisa de una aproximación multidisciplinar que requiere de un difícil encaje teórico transversal. Con el caso de algunas comunidades musulmanas que abogan por la aplicación de la Sharía, nos enfrentamos al reto de cómo encajar, desde la perspectiva de la teoría política, lo que parece suponer la creación de un sistema paralelo de justicia en base a una identidad cultural no territorial.

En los procesos por definir y conservar los límites culturales, minorías religiosas como la musulmana buscan adaptarse de forma constante al entorno de la sociedad mayoritaria tratando de encontrar nuevas formas culturales de valor estratégico, lo que les empuja a definir y posicionar constantemente su identidad. De ahí que la acomodación de su diferencia se esté posicionando hacia el dominio del derecho personal mediante la Sharía, con el fin de retener el control sobre el derecho de familia y poder así definir los criterios de membresía y los límites de su identidad.

Estas reivindicaciones culturales empujan a la sociedad española hacia una transformación que puede analizarse desde dos grandes niveles de discusión teórica. Uno institucional, donde las demandas de privatización de funciones que tradicionalmente corresponden al Estado suponen, en esencia, la creación de sistemas paralelos de justicia que derivan del derecho religioso y desafían su carácter supuestamente secular. Y otro deontológico, porque con la multiplicación de la autoridad normativa en manos de las minorías religiosas, quedan expuestos muchos derechos individuales frente al reconocimiento de estos nuevos derechos colectivos de autorregulación y de la privatización de una justicia basada en la identidad. Lo interesante será constatar hasta qué punto el reconocimiento de esa realidad consigue lograr la aceptación de los tribunales españoles a través de un análisis jurisprudencial de las sentencias más relevantes al respecto.

Deeply different legal cultures entered in contact with the arrival of Europeans in North America: aboriginal cultures – of chthonian tradition – and occidental cultures both of civil law, in the case of territories “discovered” by France and Spain, and of common law, in those conquered by Great-Britain. To this day, those legal cultures live side by side and interact. The interaction of the indigenous and non-indigenous legal cultures and its organisation is a very pressing challenge as the new governances are emerging from the conclusion of self-governance and land claims agreements, but also from the ancestral and treaty rights jurisprudence that followed the adoption of the Constitution Act in 1982. The Labrador Inuit Land Claims Agreement is the second agreement in Canadian recent history to put in place a new land regime and an autonomous aboriginal government which status and power are constitutionally protected.
In this article, we argue that the Labrador Inuit Land Claims Agreement constitute an innovative experience through which the Canadian state and an aboriginal people try and develop a new relation between their respective legal cultures. This new relation is based on dialogical coordination and mutual adaptation rather than on a hegemonic assimilation of aboriginal law into state law. We will explore how this new legal configuration is enhancing land and natural resources governance in the region when also strengthening the new land regime cultural legitimacy.
*
L’arrivée des Européens en Amérique du Nord a mis en contact des univers juridiques profondément différents, à savoir les cultures indigènes – de tradition chtonienne – et les cultures occidentales de droit civil dans les territoires découverts par la France et l’Espagne, ou de common law dans ceux annexés par la Grande-Bretagne. Aujourd’hui encore, ces cultures juridiques se côtoient et interagissent. L’organisation de cette interaction des cultures juridiques autochtones et non autochtones compte parmi les défis des nouvelles formes de gouvernance qui émergent non seulement à la faveur de la conclusion d’ententes de règlements de revendications territoriales et d’autonomie gouvernementale, mais aussi sous l’impulsion de la jurisprudence relative aux droits ancestraux ou issus de traités reconnus et confirmés par la Constitution canadienne depuis 1982. L’Accord sur les revendications territoriales des Inuit du Labrador, dont traite cette brève note, est la deuxième entente dans l’histoire récente du Canada à instaurer simultanément un nouveau régime foncier et un gouvernement autochtone autonome dont le statut et les pouvoirs sont protégés constitutionnellement.
Nous entendons montrer que cet accord constitue une expérience novatrice par laquelle l’État canadien et un peuple autochtone tentent de nouer entre leur culture juridique respective un nouveau rapport faisant une place réelle à la coordination dialogique, c’est-à-dire à l’adaptation réciproque plutôt qu’à l’assimilation hégémonique du droit autochtone au droit de l’État. Il s’agit également d’expliquer en quoi cette configuration du droit pourrait améliorer la gouvernance des terres et des ressources naturelles dans la région visée en confortant la légitimité culturelle du nouvel ordre foncier.

This article reviews the main scholastic norms relevant to property and land rights in ancient and medieval India, and then surveys a range of inscriptions that illustrate the contours of land law in practice.  The evidence suggests that India developed a sophisticated concept of landed property from earliest history, with conceptual tools and legal instruments to define the rights of owners vis-à-vis rulers, rival claimants, and holders of subordinate interests (such as tenants, cultivators, mortgagees, etc.).  It further shows that although earlier inscriptions deployed those tools and instruments in a narrow range of transfers between rulers and Brahmins or other religious groups, subsequent periods provide evidence of an increasingly wider application, including gifts by non-elite donors, ordinary contractual land transfers, and resolution of property disputes.  In some cases, the implication seems to be that the legal framework was more widespread in practice but generated durable records (in metal or stone) only for elite actors; in many cases, it seems likely that elite legal resources became more widely available over time.  Moreover, documents sometimes bring to the fore aspects of property law — the role of councils and arbitrators in administering the law (rather than the king or his officers), or the use of documents to carve out special rights — that are less prominent in scholastic treatments such as Dharmaśāstra.

About one-third of the world's population currently lives under pluri-legal systems where governments hold individuals subject to the purview of ethno-religious rather than national norms in respect to family law. How does the state-enforcement of these religious family laws impact fundamental rights and liberties? What resistance strategies do people employ in order to overcome the disabilities and limitations these religious laws impose upon their rights? Based on archival research, court observations and interviews with individuals from three countries, Yüksel Sezgin shows that governments have often intervened in order to impress a particular image of subjectivity upon a society, while people have constantly challenged the interpretive monopoly of courts and state-sanctioned religious institutions, re-negotiated their rights and duties under the law, and changed the system from within. He also identifies key lessons and best practices for the integration of universal human rights principles into religious legal systems.

The concept of ‘Asian laws in Britain’ was proposed in the 1990s by a leading scholar of South Asian laws, Werner Menski, within the larger framework of legal pluralism. This article explores the reasons why it might be an attractive description and the possible reasons for its shortcomings, as well as a brief assessment of its take up more widely among scholars, officials, the communities to which it refers and others. The article examines the viability of this conception of Asian laws in the British diasporic sphere by entering the broader debate between the proponents of legal pluralism and their naysayers, identifying the main lines of dispute and its productive results as well as their limits in helping to make progress towards a theory of law. The mutual accusations of ethnocentrism, Eurocentrism or parochialism among the debate’s protagonists are discussed in order to identify how legal pluralists may be open to the charges they level against their opponents. The discussion i...

"Vivimos, o nos afanamos en vivir, en una sociedad cuya vigilancia se incrementa frente a la tiranía que la opinión mayoritaria puede imponer sobre quienes, por cualquier razón, constituyen una minoría débil o sin voz. La igualdad bajo la ley, los derechos humanos y la protección de las minorías deben ser más que lo que el Juez Brennan en la High Court de Australia describió una vez de forma memorable como 'el encantamiento de la retórica legal"'. (Munby U, Decisión de la Court of Appeal en Singh v. Entry Abstract: This study explores the interface between legal pluralism and multiculturality, taking as reference british muslim minority nomoi groups and the altemative means of solution of controversies embodied in the Sharia Councils and the Muslim Arbitral Tribunal (MAT). Howewer, before dealing with this matter in the United Kingdom, our study mak:es insights from a comparative point of view both in Canada and the United States, where, in spite of no minor similitudes, the status of the aforesaid means of altemative solution of controversies is, at present time, far more different, given a deeper degree of religious pluralism and more reliance in arbitration at large in the United States. These two factors, and the widely known pragmatism and tolerance of the United Kingdom result, although there have been rounds of controversy about it, in the acceptance in that Country of the workings of the Sharia Councils and the MAT, in the twilight of British law-in the first case-or tak:en * El presente estudio se ha desarrollado dentro del Programa Consolider-lngenio 2010, HURI-AGE, THE AGE OF RIGHTS. CSD 2008-00007. Lo dedicamos a la memoria de nuestro excelente amigo y compañero el Dr. Don José Sarrión Gualda, Catedrático Emérito de Historia del Derecho en nuestra Universidad, dejando también constancia de nuestro agradecimiento por la ayuda que nos prestó al proporcionamos muy valiosos datos del Derecho histórico español.

In the Ottoman state there were so many ethnic, religious groups that had different cultures. Contemporary advanced countries should take lessons from the Ottoman State experience because there were a lot of communities had different life style and culture in the Ottoman State like contemporary states and these communities lived in harmony with each other. Although contemporary doctrines are not agreed with the definition of multiculturalism, the different culture and life style in the Ottoman State correspond to the multiculturalism. These multicultural communities in the Ottoman State affect the Ottoman Law system. The Ottoman state showed respect to their diversity and allow them to carry out their own specific law to solve some conflicts between themselves. Especially civil law disputes such as family law, inheritance law etc. were completed in accordance with their own rules. Even the Ottoman State permitted them to establish their private courts. This kind of law system defined as legal pluralism in nowadays corresponds to Ottoman Millet System in Turkish Law History literature. In this presentation I will mention the details of Ottoman Millet System and argue how contemporary states dealing with multiculturalism can take lessons from Ottoman experience. I will apply primary sources such as Ottoman Judges (Qadı) records, state archives records in this study.

The course explores Russian legal culture as a complex phenomenon of Russian society. Studying legal culture provides students with fundamental aspects of social and legal theory and socio-legal studies. The class draws on a comparative and transcultural perspective to highlight the plurality of legal cultures in different contexts. The course shows some historical roots of the modern processes of the Russian legal culture. The XX-th century was divided between the rule of authoritarianism and, subsequently, post-authoritarianism. Throughout these transformations, the law (legal system) became a central objective of the reforms in contemporary Russia. Russian society has never been one where the rule of law is recognized as within Western liberal legal theory. In Russian society, legal culture is framed by a variety of sectors, institutions, and practices, and one of the central goals of the course is to help students develop the skills to recognize these competing elements of legal culture and their significance for everyday life as well as particular historical events. The study of different legal cultures and questions of the applicability of Western theories are in the center of inquiry and, simultaneously, lay the ground for students developing critical thinking skills. Sociological approaches allow tracing the restructuring of legal institutions as it is implemented 'from above,' and at the same time, attending to the practice of law enforcement or forms of problem solution that, often, are outside of the purview of law. The course therefore aims to introduce students to the broader context and notions of legality and the law in the Soviet and Russian societies by looking at the specificity of social relations, the role of informal spheres for life within the Soviet and Russian society, and "surrogate" legal institutions and practices. The central focus here is a study of representations of justice and the individual consciousness of people living in totalitarian or authoritarian society, or in a society of the "facade" rule of law.

"Vivimos, o nos afanamos en vivir, en una sociedad cuya vigilancia se incrementa frente a la tiranía que la opinión mayoritaria puede imponer sobre quienes, por cualquier razón, constituyen una minoría débil o sin voz. La igualdad bajo la ley, los derechos humanos y la protección de las minorías deben ser más que lo que el Juez Brennan en la High Court de Australia describió una vez de forma memorable como 'el encantamiento de la retórica legal"'. (Munby U, Decisión de la Court of Appeal en Singh v. Entry Abstract: This study explores the interface between legal pluralism and multiculturality, taking as reference british muslim minority nomoi groups and the altemative means of solution of controversies embodied in the Sharia Councils and the Muslim Arbitral Tribunal (MAT). Howewer, before dealing with this matter in the United Kingdom, our study mak:es insights from a comparative point of view both in Canada and the United States, where, in spite of no minor similitudes, the status of the aforesaid means of altemative solution of controversies is, at present time, far more different, given a deeper degree of religious pluralism and more reliance in arbitration at large in the United States. These two factors, and the widely known pragmatism and tolerance of the United Kingdom result, although there have been rounds of controversy about it, in the acceptance in that Country of the workings of the Sharia Councils and the MAT, in the twilight of British law-in the first case-or tak:en * El presente estudio se ha desarrollado dentro del Programa Consolider-lngenio 2010, HURI-AGE, THE AGE OF RIGHTS. CSD 2008-00007. Lo dedicamos a la memoria de nuestro excelente amigo y compañero el Dr. Don José Sarrión Gualda, Catedrático Emérito de Historia del Derecho en nuestra Universidad, dejando también constancia de nuestro agradecimiento por la ayuda que nos prestó al proporcionamos muy valiosos datos del Derecho histórico español.

This article proposes to analyze the socio-linguistic practices documented in inscriptions from South and Southeast Asia between the fourth and sixteenth centuries as a type of “functional diglossia” characteristic of legal discourse in states influenced by the transregional Dharmaśāstra tradition in Sanskrit.  This diglossia can take two forms. Sanskrit itself may be used as an acrolect, either alone or in bilingual records, where it has primarily expressive or ceremonial functions. But the focus in this article is on the other form: the use of a highly Sanskritized, formal and formulaic register of the local vernaculars. Starting with some observations about the impact of Sanskrit legal discourse on Old Khmer and Old Javanese legal records, comparable inscriptions in Old Tamil are examined in detail, noting the influence of first Prakrit and then Sanskrit on legal idiom. It is concluded that use of this Sanskritized register reflects not simply the prestige of Brahmanical high culture but also the perceived value and utility of an imported specialized conceptual system of law and administration. This study further suggests that the introduction of written legal documentation, simultaneous with the spread of Brahmanical legal ideas, led in turn to the formal recognition of local customary norms as law, in keeping with the Dharmaśāstric principle that customary norms constitute Dharma.

In this review the author considers the emerging role of interdisciplinary and legal education in modeling, teaching, and contributing to emerging sui generis, intercultural legal systems in North America.  In particular, review considers educational efforts to engage indigenous legal tradition, within the context of work currently underway in the Coast and Strait Salish Sea region.  As an Interdisciplinary review intended for higher education administrators and educators of varying understanding, there is a range of content to introduce and consider, and an explanatory nature.  Sub-topics are considered in relation to each other, and not as absolute or precise in their representations.  What is being considered are the themes, contrasts, and questions that arise from the combination of interdisciplinary and place based study, in relation to higher education administration and legal education.
Conference Proceedings are a summative outline of the literature review rationale and methodology, and examples of findings and recommendations.
Author positionality: Natasha Hart is a graduate of Fairhaven Interdisciplinary College at Western Washington University (WWU).  She holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Interdisciplinary Studies of Law, Diversity, and Justice: Equitable Policy Development, and is currently a graduate student (MEd) in Adult and Higher Education at Woodring College of Education at WWU.  The author expresses her gratitude to individuals who have supported this review research through their suggesting sources, inclusivity, sharing stories, and guiding questions: T. Sampson - TTASELEK, D. Hillaire, J. Finkbonner and Lummi Youth Canoe Family, S. Williams and T. Olsen. For encouraging and supporting the design of this review research process and conference presentation: Dr. S. Cuban and Dr. G. Goulet of Woodring College of Education.

In accordance with the Medina Accord, the Ottomans promised non-Muslims that their lives and properties were protected and they would not be compelled to convert to Islam unless they were volunteered. Furthermore, under the Ottoman legal system, the state did not apply Islamic law on non-Muslims such as Jews, Christians and other religious groups living in the Empire. The Ottoman Empire provided non-Muslims with the freedom to run their own courts and solve their issues. A Jew could ask a Rabbi to interfere and make a binding decision based on Torah and the same would apply to Christians. This unique system is different from the Western legal systems including Canada. The Millet system could have been the reason why many nations from different ethnic and religious backgrounds were able to live together for over six hundred years.