Legal Pluralism Across History and Today

The talk will contrast the monist theory of the law state that jurists hold with the pervasive reality of legal pluralism in the past and present. Professor Tamanaha will cover the history of legal pluralism in the medieval period, the consolidation of law in the state, the spread of legal pluralism through colonization, the proliferation of transnational law in the modern age, all of which has led to contemporary legal pluralism within states and across states around the globe. Professor Brian Z. Tamanaha is a renowned jurisprudence and law and society scholar, and the author of ten books and over seventy-five articles and book chapters. His latest book is Legal Pluralism Explained: History, Theory, Consequences (Oxford 2021). His previous book, A Realistic Theory of Law (Cambridge 2017), received the 2019 IVR Book Prize from the International Association of the Philosophy of Law and Social Philosophy for best legal philosophy book published in 2016-18, as well as an Honorable Mention for the 2018 Prose Awards in Law by the Association of University Presses. On the Rule of Law (Cambridge 2004) has been translated into nine languages, and altogether his publications have been translated into twelve languages. He has delivered eight named lectures at home and abroad, including the Kobe Memorial Lecture in Tokyo, the Julius Stone Address in Sydney, the Cotterrell Lecture in London, and the Montesquieu Lecture in Tilburg. He spent a year in residence as Member of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, where he wrote Beyond the Formalist-Realist Divide (Princeton 2010). His work has been the subject of four published symposia, and his books have been reviewed in many venues, including the Harvard Law Review, Michigan Law Review, Cambridge Law Journal, Law and Society Review, Law and History Review, American Ethnologist, Legal Theory, and the Washington Post.

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The lecture will be delivered as part of the series Tocquevillian Lectures: Philosophy, Society, and Law. The series aims at reasonable reflection on values and issues of the public concern, based on new, cutting-edge monographs. We invite authors whose work either generates new important questions, or answers the persistent ones in a fresh way. The lectures then reflect a wide range of scholarly perspectives and methodologies. Keeping a necessary distance from current politics, the organizers hope to trigger principled reflection on law in a broader philosophical and cultural context.