Global legal pluralism

"Global legal pluralism applies the insights of socio-legal scholarship and turns the gaze away from abstract questions of legitimacy and towards empirical questions of efficacy. Thus, pluralists de-emphasize the supposed distinctions between a norm, a custom, a law, a moral command, a sociological consensus, a psychological imperative, or the like. Instead, a pluralist approach focuses on whether people in actual practice perceive such legal or quasi-legal commands to be binding, how these commands seep into consciousness over time, and whether the mere existence of these commands alters the power dynamics or options placed on the table in policy discussions". (p. 154)

"The evolution of global legal pluralism scholarship is astonishing in its variety, richness, empirical detail, and theoretical sophistication. Indeed, this survey merely scratches the surface of the burgeoning literature in the field. And, over the coming decades, we can expect this scholarly framework to develop further, putting forth new models for conceptualizing interactions among relative, non-hierarchically organized legal orders, identifying new mechanisms, institutions and practices for structuring such interactions, and evaluating the strengths and weaknesses of the regimes that emerge." (p. 188)

P.S. Berman, The evolution of global legal pluralism, in: R.Cotterrell/M. Del Mar (eds.) Authority in Transnational Legal Theory. Theorising Across Disciplines, Edward Elgar, 2016, pp. 151-188