ABSTRACT
This chapter identifies and characterizes the various processes through which State and non-State legal systems react to legal plurality and draw – or fail to draw – legal consequences from such plurality for their own purposes. The cases studied have made it possible to identify two broad categories of processes that legal systems use to manage legal pluralism: (1) management by articulation and (2) management by adaptation. Articulation takes place when the managing system acknowledges the existence of another system (the system of reference) and gives that other system some measure of direct legal effectivity. This category can be broken down into two main processes: articulation by reception, which happens when the articulating system receives and then manages within itself elements of another system, and articulation by withdrawal, where one system acknowledges another and stands back to allow that other system to govern a given conflict or situation. Adaptation takes place when the managing system, as a result of its contact with another system, adapts and transforms yet does not recognize the system of reference as a binding legal source of principles, rules, processes, or authority. This category also comprises two main processes which are not watertight categories: adaptation by imitation, which takes place when one system is inspired by solutions in another system and adapts them to its own legal context and culture, and adaptation by endogenous modulation, where a system comes into contact with another whose existence and actions it acknowledges, and draws on its own endogenous values, principles, and processes to adjust its own laws. Drawing examples from various case studies, this chapter will show that while some of these processes are employed by both State and non-State legal systems, others are used primarily by either one system or the other.
