Ordering Pluralism

Abstract

In the traditional legal culture, the expression of “ordering pluralism” is rather unusual. Pluralism implies differences, dispersion and fragmentation, whereas “legal order” leads us to think in terms of a unified structure. From this perspective, a legal order is necessarily unified, hierarchical and almost static. But our legal history has changed and we must rise to the challenge of changing our minds. The world is not static but interactive and rapidly evolving. In Europe, a supranational legal order was established after the end of World War II. In the whole world, the end of Cold War accelerated the so-called globalisation of law. In this new global world, we have to observe the different processes used for ordering pluralism by integrating the plural without reducing it to the identical. Using “ordering”, rather than “ordered” pluralism, because it is a way to stress the processes of integration rather than the results, the movement rather than the model. Looking at these processes, we will identify different degrees of integration, different levels in space, and different speeds in time to analyse the possible answers to a series of questions: How? Where? When? And finally, what will the future world order look like? As the states become more and more interdependent, a radical conception of sovereignty seems to pave the way to the great legal disorder; but an absolute universalism may produce the risk of unifying and freezing the world order in a hegemonic way. If we refuse both extremes, we have no choice but to try to reconcile diversity and unity in “ordering pluralism” by imagining a pluralist model.