Constitutional monism and legal monism – the idea that there is a clear hierarchy of institutions and rules within a constitutional or legal order – have proved to be inadequate theories for conceptualizing contemporary constitutional and legal orders. This panel explores pluralism, an alternative to monism, from the descriptive, normative and explanatory angles. It examines...
Legal pluralism: a means of sustaining liberal constitutionalism within authoritarianism? The case of China and Hong Kong
In this paper, legal pluralism is defined as the existence of conflicting rules within a legal system on an institution‘s legal power, with no other institution possessing the legal power to resolve that conflict. An example of such pluralism is found in the interaction between European law and member state law: the ECJ claims that...
State Constitutional Pluralism
The complexity of engagement among multiple legal systems is now an increasingly studied subject. However, despite a broad range of legal pluralism scholarship examining the presence and engagement of state/non-state as well as state/state legal systems, much constitutional law scholarship tends towards a monist perspective in examining state constitutions. While constitutional pluralism has emerged as...
What role for pluralism in inter-court relationships? – An explanatory framework
It has been observed in recent years that the relationship between domestic and international courts typically does not follow hierarchical patterns. Therefore, some legal scholars have coined the term ‘pluralism‘ to describe relationships between domestic and international courts in which neither Court accepts the absolute supremacy of another court, but still seeks to establish a...