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Rhys Aston School of Law, Flinders University

Legal Pluralism and Social Change: An exploration of jurisprudential and social scientific understandings of law. Rhys Aston School of Law, Flinders University. Legal Theory and Social Change. Two Perspectives on Law 1. Law enables social change 2. Law inhibits social change.

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Rhys Aston School of Law, Flinders University

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  1. Legal Pluralism and Social Change: An exploration of jurisprudential and social scientific understandings of law Rhys Aston School of Law, Flinders University

  2. Legal Theory and Social Change Two Perspectives on Law 1. Law enables social change 2. Law inhibits social change

  3. Legal Theory and Social Change • Law enables social change - Provides resources which marginalised groups can harness to challenge dominant power structures - Liberalism / legal positivism - Neutral institution separate from broader social processes -Law reform a central strategy

  4. Legal Theory and Social Change 2. Law inhibits social change - An institutional expression of dominant power structures and something to be resisted and challenged - Critical approaches to law -Structural biases - Sceptical of law’s political utility

  5. Legal Pluralism - ‘...that state of affairs, for any social field, in which behaviour pursuant to more than one legal order occurs.’ (John Griffiths, ‘What is Legal Pluralism’ (1986) 24 Journal of Legal Pluralism 1, 2.) • Social Scientific Legal Pluralism • Critical Legal Pluralism

  6. Social Scientific Legal Pluralism A Plurality of Legal Orders • Colonial/Post-colonial context • National context • International context

  7. Critical Legal Pluralism The Inherent Plurality of all Legal Orders • A reassessment of social-scientific legal pluralism • Subject-centred approach with an emphasis on jurisgenesis • Law and legal subjects exist in a relationship of mutual constitution

  8. Critical Legal Pluralism and Social Change An analysis of... 1. The ways in which people construct law 2. The extent to which these constructions relate to, draw upon, and potentially resist pre-existing meanings 3. The potential for these constructions to open pathways through which alternative visions of both society and law can be developed and sustained

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