Legal Pluralism

1988/01/01 by Sally Engle Merry · 1,221 citations
Social Sciences · #Epistemology #Judicial and Constitutional Studies #Law #Law and economics #Law in Society and Culture #Legal pluralism #Legal realism #Legal research #Multicultural Socio-Legal Studies #Philosophy #Pluralism (philosophy) #Political science #Sociology

paper · doi:10.2307/3053638

published in Law & Society Review 22(5), 869-896 (Cambridge University Press)

openalex publication_date 1988/01/01 · openalex created_date 2022/05/12 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05

Abstract

The intellectual odyssey of the concept of legal pluralism moves from the discovery of indigenous forms of law among remote African villagers and New Guinea tribesmen to debates concerning the pluralistic qualities of law under advanced capitalism. In the last decade, the concept of legal pluralism has been applied to the study of social and legal ordering in urban industrial societies, primarily the United States, Britain, and France. Indeed, given a sufficiently broad definition of the term legal system, virtually every society is legally plural, whether or not it has a colonial past. Legal pluralism is a central theme in the reconceptualization of the law/society relation.

Citations

• Law and Social Change: The Semi-Autonomous Social Field as an Appropriate Subject of Study

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