The Possibility of Intercultural Law
On 9 and 10 June 2006, the Annual Meeting of the Association for Legal Philosophy will be held in
Conference Center Kaap Doorn, Driebergen/Zeist, The Netherlands. This year the annual meeting is combined
with a two-day international conference entitled: ‘The Possibility of Intercultural Law’.
Introduction to the conference
In the past decades debates have developed around multiculturalism and
legal pluralism. The rise of international terrorism and growing tensions
between different cultural orientations within the nation state have given
these debates a sharp edge. On the one hand politicians, scholars and other
public opinion makers call for a rehabilitation of presumed indigenous
norms and values, demanding of residents with roots in other traditions to
take over the national canon or otherwise – as some suggest – leave. On the
other hand, proponents of multiculturalism and legal pluralism call for the
acceptance of difference, declaring that bridging such difference is in fact
impossible because we are all caught up in our own parochial perspectives.
Though it may be easy to argue that both positions are unwise and in fact
start from the same (mis)conception of ‘culture’ as homogenous and
‘cultures’ as mutually exclusive, it may be more difficult to advance a third
position in which difference is respected yet not glorified, and in which a
positive theory of intercultural law can be developed.
In the context of this conference ‘intercultural law’ should be understood as
a type of law that manages to bring together a diversity of legally relevant
social practices. This would mean that such law regulates diversity without
enforcing rigid unity and without endorsing a normative chaos that would
lead to legal uncertainty. For legal philosophy the question is whether this
is indeed possible: Which are the epistemological and methodological
presumptions of such a conception of law? Do we have to discard the
central tenet of some post-modern comparativists that proclaim the
incommensurability of cultures? Do we have to relativise Western
conceptions of positive law? To what degree is coordination of diversity
sustainable? At which point will legislation or adjudication have to cut the
knot, for instance in order to reduce complexity? This conference aims to
raise these questions and others that may appear relevant.
Information
For information regarding the format of the conference, participants, programme and registration please visit the conference webpage: http://rechten.uvt.nl/vwr/.
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