7. Conclusion: New Juridical Instruments for a New World

In the field of multicultural dialogue, which is something relevant in a juridical analysis as well, it is necessary to recall the tension between affirming one’s identity and opening to otherness. In particular, assuming the category of cultural difference as logically preceding identity would ultimately put into question every form of conceptual universalization. Similarly, in our case, the awareness of the structural differences in two juridical perspectives can not only question an undiscriminated Westernization of juridical notions but also lead to a more contextualized dialogue between legal orders. On this, cf. Randi Gressgård [2010], Multicultural Dialogue. Dilemmas, Paradoxes, Conflicts, Berghahn Books, New York-Oxford 2012, pp. 87–88.

Here, I borrow the terminology of Peter Stein, Legal Evolution. The Story of an Idea, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1980, in this sense especially at p. 19. The concept was later reinterpreted by Fitzpatrick in rejecting the erroneous position according to which customary law represented an underdeveloped stage on the path of the evolution of a legal system, before a natural separation between law and society (Fitzpatrick, The Mythology of Modern Law, cit., pp. 87–91).

Ayoob, Lussier, The Many Faces of Political Islam, cit., p. 26.

Particularly interesting is the metaphorical concept of legal transplant, which “suggests a teleological development toward a fixed endpoint—legal systems will mature into liberal democratic rule of law just as Aristotle’s tiny acorn will one day become a sturdy oak tree” (Randall Peerenboom [2006], “What have we learned about law and development? Describing, predicting and assessing legal reforms in China”, in Law and Society in East Asia, eds. Christoph Antons, Roman Tomasic, Routledge, London-New York 2016, p. 162). This process of legal transplantation may indeed be led intentionally for political purposes, like in the case of colonialism, or, as I intend here, it may be understood as a sort of natural process guiding all the legal orders toward a final endpoint—being it represented by human rights law, liberal democracy, or other principles. This last notion is evidently linked to the idea of legal evolution, already mentioned in these conclusive remarks. The image of legal transplant is also used by Chiba, Legal Pluralism, cit., p. 151.

The idea of an overall coherence of the legal system is explored by Neil MacCormick, Rhetoric and The Rule of Law: A Theory of Legal Reasoning, Oxford University Press, Oxford 2005, especially pp. 121–142. Interpreting and discussing MacCormick’s position, Carbonell points out that it is only within a “systemic context that the legal material acquires its significance. Therefore, the ideal of overall coherence governs the view of the legal system as a system, and helps to make sense, to bring together and to order the multiplicity of the different kinds of norms that comprise the whole legal system” (Flavia Carbonell, “Coherence and Post-sovereign Legal Argumentation”, in Law and Democracy in Neil MacCormick’s Legal and Political Theory. The Post-Sovereign Constellation, eds. Agustín José Menéndez, John Erik Fossum, Springer, Dordrecht-Heidelberg-London-New York 2011, p. 162).

In different fields of knowledge, some authors already suggest that the present time cannot be termed postmodernism anymore, trying to investigate what may lie beyond this curtain of uncertainty. Among these authors, consider the reflections of Ihab Hassan, “Beyond Postmodernism”, in Angelaki: Journal of the Theoretical Humanities, vol. VIII, n. 1, 2003, pp. 3–11. Consider also Garry Potter, José López, “After Postmodernism: The Millennium”, in After Postmodernism. An Introduction to Critical Realism, eds. Garry Potter, José López, The Athlone Press, London-New York 2001, pp. 1–18. Alternatively, Augé speaks of super-modernity, whose spatiality is represented by non-spaces (Marc Augé [1992], Non-places. Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity, trans. John Howe, Verso, London-New York 1995, especially pp. 110 ff).

As Suter points out in describing globalization, it is to be seen “more as chaos than conspiracy, with no overall guiding hand. It is a matter of ‘disorder’ rather than ‘order’” (Keith Suter, Global Order and Global Disorder. Globalization and the Nation-State, Praeger, Westport-London 2003, p. 2). Similarly, the new international model for a globalized world could be a non-order, that is to say the negation of the idea of order.