International law and sociolegal scholarship: Toward a spatial global legal pluralism

Abstract

This essay will consider three theories developed by international law scholars to analyze the international legal terrain and the strengths of each as well as issues it fails to address sufficiently in the dimensions of power, meaning, and social relationships: bottom-up lawmaking; transnational legal processes; and global legal pluralism. The idea of bottom-up lawmaking, already discussed, has the strength of beginning from the everyday practices by which problems are solved that lead eventually to the creation of a body of law. However, the phrase bottom-up suggests that this is a grassroots movement, while it is typically cosmopolitan elites who generate the informal rules that become established over time. Explicit attention to the power relationships underlying this process would help to clarify what “bottom-up” means. As Judith Resnick points out, the terms “soft law” and “hard law” are themselves problematic, incorporating gender ideologies and suggesting that some international laws are enforced firmly, which is rarely the case in practice (personal communication).

Citation

Engle Merry, S. (2007), "International law and sociolegal scholarship: Toward a spatial global legal pluralism", Sarat, A. (Ed.) Special Issue Law and Society Reconsidered (Studies in Law, Politics, and Society, Vol. 41), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 149-168. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1059-4337(07)00006-3