Abstract

This review article examines the conceptual possibility of ‘cosmopolitan pluralism’, a jurisprudential theory developed by Paul Schiff Berman in his recent book, Global Legal Pluralism: A Jurisprudence of Law Beyond Borders. Cosmopolitan pluralism is presented as a conceptual framework for understanding and managing situations of multiple legal orders which overlap and conflict. It seeks to avoid the pitfalls of both sovereigntist territorialism, which attempts to solve all legal disputes by exclusive application of the norms of some single territorially-based jurisdiction, as well as universalism, which always looks for norms which transcend the differences of particular communities. Cosmopolitan pluralism maintains that conflicts ought to be preserved, not eliminated, and local variations should be recognized and accommodated to the greatest extent possible. Here I argue that while Berman has constructed a worthy and desirable goal for communities which find themselves in an increasingly globalized world, much work of an analytical kind remains to be done to show how such a goal is conceptually possible. As I shall attempt to demonstrate, Berman’s cosmopolitan pluralism asks for a radically revisionist understanding of the nature of law’s claim to authority, but it is not clear that such an account is available