A.J. Hoekema

European Legal Encounters between Minority and Majority Cultures: Cases of Interlegality

Abstract Local, national and international legal orders affect each other continuously through the selective ways people choose to use them. The neologism ‘interlegality’ will be used to cover this process where local law usually yields to the superior force of a dominant national system and adopts many features of the majority law; but there is also a ‘reverse interlegality’ when the local legal sensibilities and practices in some respects affect the dominant ones. In this article the concept of interlegality is set out, and an introduction given to a collection of papers containing three sets of reflections on legal encounters and interlegality between a minority culture and a majority culture. Acton analyses the legal position of the Travellers (Gypsies) under state law in the UK and contextualizes this in terms of a general discussion of how Gypsy law interacts with state law among different groups of Gypsies in various parts of the world. Svensson gives a similar analysis for the Sámi in Norway. Proulx provides a striking Canadian example of reverse interlegality by showing how local Aboriginal justice affects non-Aboriginal national justice through the channels of new institutions.

The conundrum of cross-cultural understanding in the practice of law

ABSTRACT In many countries, there are distinct communities that administer justice following their own laws. Often this informal justice is not regulated by official state law. This situation can be called empirical legal pluralism. But regularly aspects of this local law are incorporated into state laws, for instance when traditional, local authorities are granted some official competence as state judges. In a few countries, particularly in Latin America, the local indigenous law as a whole is recognized on a par with state law. These are examples of formal legal pluralism. The question is whether the local jurisdiction changes under these conditions of formal legal pluralism, and if so, in what way? How are the local ways of viewing man, social relations, nature, spirituality, and the good life – their cosmovision – distorted by their law becoming part of the national legal order that manifests a different, more individualistic philosophy? This local cosmovision is sometimes poorly understood and not respected by the dominant elites and legal functionaries of the state. In this article, we look for examples of such cross-cultural misunderstandings. Two cases of the national jurisprudence exercised by a state constitutional court will be discussed, one showing this misunderstanding, and the other one overcoming it.

Review of Laura Grenfell, Promoting the Rule of Law in Post-Conflict States

born in the UK, can be deprived of their British citizenship, and this is often done when the person is abroad and so cannot return to appeal the decision (169). Perhaps the question mark in the subtitle is redundant; the analysis in the book suggests that legislation has primarily been formed against a background of popular fear of the immigrant, resulting in major injustices that have been mediated and sometimes alleviated mostly by international conventions and through careful judgements. The book’s many appendices, which include, inter alia, a diagram of the structure of the immigration appeals system, reports from adjudicators’ trips, and guidelines on the approach to evidence, further entrench this book as a great tool for practitioners of immigration law, activists and researchers alike.

[Review of: L. Grenfell (2013) Promoting the rule of law in post-conflict states]

born in the UK, can be deprived of their British citizenship, and this is often done when the person is abroad and so cannot return to appeal the decision (169). Perhaps the question mark in the subtitle is redundant; the analysis in the book suggests that legislation has primarily been formed against a background of popular fear of the immigrant, resulting in major injustices that have been mediated and sometimes alleviated mostly by international conventions and through careful judgements. The book’s many appendices, which include, inter alia, a diagram of the structure of the immigration appeals system, reports from adjudicators’ trips, and guidelines on the approach to evidence, further entrench this book as a great tool for practitioners of immigration law, activists and researchers alike.