One, Two, Three Many Legal Orders: Legal Pluralism and the Cosmopolitan Dream

Abstract

Over the last few years, innumerable scholars have turned their attention to the fragmentation, disaggregation, and multiplicity of the international legal regime. With so many diverse perspectives on the puzzle, the opportunity, the problem, of legal pluralism in international society, I would be crazy to try to pull it all together. In my view, we are far better off leaving the issue lying about in fragments. I have three points. First, legal pluralism-whether encountered formally or sociologically--can be good for your professional moral health, opening the door to the experience of professional power. Second, in a world governed by experts, it is the pluralism of professional perspective that we least understand, and that may be the most significant. By mapping the diversity of professional sensibilities, we can put aside questions about whether "the legal order" is or should be or might be coherently unified, to focus on the projects of identity, power, and ethics pursued by legal professionals. In doing so, I want us to replace worry about legal pluralism with worry about something else-the dark sides, blind spots, and biases of the fragments. And of efforts to corral the ponies back to the herd. Third, a where-do-we-go-from-here point. My suggestion: we should take a break from the project of elaborating, celebrating, and adumbrating a normative humanist universalism. I will develop this proposal-that the cosmopolitan dream of the international legal community might take a different and plural form-with reference to the next UN Secretary General: what,concretely, should she do in a world of normative fragmentation?