Doin the Transsystemic:
Legal Systems and Legal Traditions
H. Patrick Glenn*
Transsystemic legal teaching is a challenge to the
western bias against conceiving of law as anything
other than that which is positively enacted by the state.
A more convincing explanation for the normativity of
law is provided by refocusing inquiry on legal
traditions. By examining the traditions that form the
foundations of particular legal systems, it is possible to
gain a fuller understanding of the interrelationship of
the laws of the world and to move beyond the
theoretical constraints of traditional legal positivism.
Lenseignement transsystmique du droit est un
dfi au penchant occidental qui tend ne pas considrer
comme du droit tout ce qui n’est pas formellement
promulgu par ltat. On peut toutefois dcouvrir des
explications plus convaincantes la normativit du
droit si lon interroge plutt les traditions juridiques.
Examiner les traditions la base dun systme juridique
spcifique permet de mieux saisir les corrlations entre
les divers droits du monde et de passer outre les
contraintes
juridique
traditionnel.
thoriques du positivisme
* Peter M. Laing Professor of Law, Faculty of Law and Institute of Comparative Law, McGill
University. Preliminary or partial versions of this paper were given at the Faculty of Law, University
of Toronto, the Scuola Superiore SantAnna, Pisa, the Max Planck Institute for Foreign and
International Private Law, Hamburg and at a meeting of the Socit de lgislation compare, Paris,
and the author is grateful for comments received in those fora, as well as for comments by Stephen
Smith and research assistance by Christopher Jenkins.
H. Patrick Glenn 2005
To be cited as: (2005) 50 McGill L.J. 863
Mode de rfrence : (2005) 50 R.D. McGill 863
MCGILL LAW JOURNAL / REVUE DE DROIT DE MCGILL
[Vol. 50]
864
Introduction
865
867
868
875
879
885
886
894
897
I. The Normativity of Legal Systems and Legal Traditions
A. Systems, Traditions, and Descriptive Sociology
B. The Existence of a Legal System
C. An Obligation to Obey the Law?
II. The Relations between the Laws of the World
A. General and Particular Jurisprudence
B. Relations of Conflict and Relations of Conciliation
Conclusion
2005]
H.P. GLENN LEGAL SYSTEMS AND LEGAL TRADITIONS
865
Introduction
The Faculty of Law of McGill University has recently embarked on a programme
of legal education in which students study simultaneously, in the same classroom,
civil and common law subjects. It is commonly, though unofficially, referred to as
transsystemic legal education.1 The word says a great deal about how the concept
of system has impressed itself on legal education in the last two centuries, but what
can it possibly mean? If law is found exclusively within legal systems, how can it be
found, and taught (as the prefix trans indicates) across, through, beyond, and
even on the farther side of those same systems?2 The question raises fundamental
issues about the conceptualization of law and about how one should think, and teach,
the laws of the world and their relations to one another. It also raises a fundamental
challenge to the idea of law conceived in terms of legal systems, probably the most
pervasive concept of western legal thought for the last two centuries, now used more
or less indiscriminately to describe laws of all provenances and types.
The notion of system comes from the Greek sustema, as assemblage or ensemble,
but came into the mainstream of western intellectual life with the development of
taxonomic biology in the eighteenth century, using systems as units of analysis.3 It
received great impetus in the twentieth century with the development of informational
systems theory,4 but in law had already come into accepted use by the eighteenth
century,5 such that the French codifiers of 1804 felt it necessary to vigorously
disclaim (Un systme! Nous nen avons point …) any systemic intentions.6 It has
obviously been closely linked to the development of exclusivist state authority (hence
the disingenuous French disclaimer) and is thus a product of its times. With what is
1 For the programme, see notably Nicholas Kasirer, Bijuralism in Laws Empire and in Laws
Cosmos (2002) 52 J. Legal Educ. 29; Yves-Marie Morissette, McGills Integrated Civil and
Common Law Programme (2002) 52 J. Legal Educ. 12; Daniel Jutras, noncer lindicible : Le droit
entre langues et traditions [2000] R.I.D.C. 781, especially at 791ff.; Daniel Jutras, Two Arguments
for Cross-cultural Legal Education in Heinz-Dieter Assmann, Gert Brggemeier & Rolf Sethe, eds.,
Different Legal CulturesConvergence of Legal Reasoning: Grundlagen und Schwerpunkte des
Privatrechts in europischer Perspektive, vol. 3 (Baden-Baden: Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft, 2001) 75;
Adelle Blackett, Globalization and Its Ambiguities: Implications for Law School Curricular Reform
(1998) 37 Colum. J. Transnatl L. 57; Julie Bdard, Transsystemic Teaching of Law at McGill:
Radical Changes, Old and New Hats (2001) 27 Queens L.J. 237; Pierre Larouche, Lintgration,
les systmes juridiques et la formation juridique (2001) 46 McGill L.J. 1011.
2 The definitions are those of The Oxford Reference Dictionary (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986).
3 See Carl von Linn (Linnaeus), Systema naturae (London: Trustees of the British Museum, 1956)
(1st ed. 1735). For scientific antecedents dating from the seventeenth century, see Ren Sve,
Introduction in Le systme juridique (1986) 31 Archives de philosophie du droit 1 at 3.
4 See Thomas D. Barton, The Structure of Legal Systems (1992) 37 Am. J. Juris. 291 at 291-92, n.
4 (with references to Bertalanffy, Laszlo).
5 See Sve, Introduction, supra note 3 at 3-4.
6 See Ren Sve, Systme et code in Le systme juridique, supra note 3, 77 at 82, citing
Cambacrs.
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today described, however, as the decline of the state,7 the notion of a legal system
may also suffer a corresponding decline.
[Vol. 50]
Recent critiques of legal philosophers suggest that, beyond the traditional
challenges offered by other ways of thinking about law, the decline of the idea of a
legal system is already under way. In spite of the sophisticated character of systemic
legal thought, and the genuine analytical progress which it has brought about, it has
been described as not fcond or adequate for the legal enterprise.8 Its research
programme has been described as stagnant;9 its central concern with the concept of
law has been said to be one that really does not matter all that much;10 the debate on
the nature of legal positivism, and hence of legal systems, has been said to involve
an increasingly narrow and arcane debate, with less and less at stake.11 In France it
has been observed that the practitioners of legal positivism do not see beyond the
end of their norm12 and that there is increasing reluctance to think of law as system,
as opposed to a means of dispute resolution or juxtaposition of solutions.13 A German
author has found that existing frameworks are partially outmoded because the
premises of the state systems … have been eroded.14 The McGill Programme would
thus be paralleled by major developments in the shape of institutional structures in the
world and in philosophical thinking. Legal education would necessarily have to track,
and even foreshadow, these developments.
The idea of transsystemic legal education is therefore a very contemporary and
justifiable one. It may even be seen as innovative, given the historical western bias
against teaching anything other than a one, true law (historically, either the ius
7 See Martin van Crefeld, The Rise and Decline of the State (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1999); Philip Bobbitt, The Shield of Achilles: War, Peace, and the Course of History (New
York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2002), especially at 237 and 241 (on the declining role of the state in matters
of internal security and welfare), and at 337 (on the state not withering away but undergoing
historical change). The designation state, applied to abstract political units, came into use in the
first half of the seventeenth century.
8 Christophe Grzegorczyk, valuation critique du paradigme systmique dans la science du droit
in Le systme juridique, supra note 3, 281 at 301.
9 David Dyzenhaus, Positivisms Stagnant Reseach Programme (2000) 20 Oxford J. Legal Stud.
703.
10 Liam Murphy, The Political Question of the Concept of Law in Jules Coleman, ed., Harts
Postscript: Essays on the Postscript to the Concept of Law (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001)
371 at 409 [Coleman, Harts Postscript].
11 Brian Z. Tamanaha, Socio-legal Positivism and a General Jurisprudence (2001) 21 Oxford J.
Legal. Stud. 1 at 32.
12 Grard Timsit, Thmes et systmes du droit (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1986) at 1
(juristes qui ne voient pas plus loin que le bout de leur norme), referring also to a phenomenon of
glaciation brutale and an image immobile de systmes de droit ferms sur eux-mmes (ibid. at 2).
13 Bruno Oppetit, Droit et modernit (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1998) at 113, n. 1.
14 W. Krawietz, Paradigms, Positions and Prospects of RationalityThe Changing Foundation of
Law in Institutional and Systems Theory in Anders Bratholm et al., Samfunn Rett Rettferdighet:
Festskrift til Torstein Eckhoffs 70-rsdag (Oslo: Tano A/S, 1986) 452 at 453.
867
H.P. GLENN LEGAL SYSTEMS AND LEGAL TRADITIONS
2005]
commune or the law of the state).15 Yet what is to be taught, and how? Unlike popular
music and dance, which are both innovative and ephemeral (Doin the Do, Doin the
Lawnmower, Doin the New Low-Down), there are limits to innovation in
professional instruction, and the law that is taught should in principle be founded on
law that is lived and practised outside the university. Doin the transsystemic therefore
cannot involve inventing the law to be taught, nor concentrating exclusively on law
known as international. It should rather involve the teaching of law which is more
deeply rooted or profound than the law of legal systems, that which underlies and
pervades all of them. This, it will be suggested here, involves reinvigoration of the
idea of legal tradition as the necessary foundation of legal systems and as the
necessary means of teaching across, through, and beyond them. Reinvigoration of the
idea of legal tradition provides benefits, however, beyond those of legal education. It
also allows a larger and more convincing explanation of the normativity of law and of
the relations between the laws of the world.
I. The Normativity of Legal Systems and Legal Traditions
Hart famously stated that the heart of a legal system is to be found in the
combination of primary rules of obligation with the secondary rules of recognition,
change and adjudication.16 Secondary rules would be rules about rules,17 and they
would provide a means of securing certainty, ordered change, and efficiency in law.18
These propositions have been enormously influential, while provoking great
controversy. They have been influential in providing analytical means of thinking
about the structure of state law. They have been controversial largely because of the
implication that state law can be identified through the formal operation of secondary
rules, with no regard to its content. A bad or evil law is therefore possible, though it
may be recognizably a bad or evil law. In the Anglo-American world, Hart has been
challenged most vigorously by Ronald Dworkin, defending the existence of legal
principles that provide moral justification for law,19 but there has been deeply rooted
criticism elsewhere of law formally defined.20 This debate has been widely diffused
and represents in a sense the tip of the iceberg, the most visible and presentist
dimension of the idea of a legal system. A compromise position is evident, and Hart
15 See H.P. Glenn, Legal Education and Legal Hegemony in Swiss Institute of Comparative Law,
Imperialism and Chauvinism in the Law (Zurich: Schulthess, 2004) 11.
16 H.L.A. Hart, The Concept of Law, 2d ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994) at 98.
17 Ibid. at 94.
18 Ibid. at 94-97.
19 Ronald Dworkin, Taking Rights Seriously (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1977).
20 See Uwe Wesel, Geschichte des Rechts: Von den Frhformen bis zum Vertrag von Maastricht
(Munich: C.H. Beck, 2001) at 47 (law for Roman jurists an art whose content was justice and
morality, rather than a formal science; law, defined abstractly, separated from justice only in the
eighteenth century, followed by a process of legalization (Verrechtlichung) of society, as a means of
domination). For a re-presentation of classical natural law theory, inconsistent with the use of non-
evaluative identifying criteria for law, see John Finnis, Natural Law and Natural Rights (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1980).
MCGILL LAW JOURNAL / REVUE DE DROIT DE MCGILL
868
himself in the postscript to the second edition of his Concept of Law acknowledged
that conformity with moral principles or substantive values could be incorporated
into secondary rules as a criterion of legal validity (soft positivism).21 Legal
systems could therefore exist that are based on substantive content (though this is of
course contested) and the notion of a legal system can be therefore seen as
sufficiently elastic to encompass the Hart-Dworkin debate or the debate between
hard and soft positivists.22
[Vol. 50]
In what follows, an effort will be made to engage with the rest of the iceberg
the fundamental, underlying notions and normative deficiencies of the idea of a legal
system. The project is not, however, one of destruction but rather of limitation or
contextualization. How can one think of, and teach, an idea of legal system that is
declining in significance? The process implies that legal systems continue to exist, in
some measure, but that they cannot be thought of as they previously were. What
replaces, if anything, the loss in explanatory power of the ideas of the state and its
legal system? This requires examining a number of features of legal systems, as
opposed to the larger idea of legal tradition.
A. Systems, Traditions, and Descriptive Sociology
Hart stated that the lawyer will regard his Concept of Law as an essay in
analytical jurisprudence but that it may also be regarded as an essay in descriptive
sociology.23 The theory of legal systems would thus not be normative or evaluative
but would rather be analytical and descriptive. This distinction is fundamental to the
theory, since if law is to be identified by its formal characteristics (derived from
adherence to secondary rules), it is important to avoid not only moral or normative
21 Hart, supra note 16 at 251; see generally ibid. at 250ff. (soft positivism).
22 As to which see Jules Coleman, Incorporationism, Conventionality, and the Practical Difference
Thesis in Coleman, Harts Postscript, supra note 10, 99 at 100, 101 [Coleman, Incorporationism];
Andrei Marmor, Exclusive Legal Positivism in Jules Coleman & Scott Shapiro, eds., The Oxford
Handbook of Jurisprudence and Philosophy of Law (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002) 104;
Kenneth Einar Himma, Inclusive Legal Positivism in Coleman & Shapiro, ibid. at 125. The
existence of legal systems has been accepted by both Dworkin and Finnis as compatible with their
normative conceptions of law, though there are important differences between the two. Dworkin
appears most committed to systemic concerns in stating that [e]ach lawyer has joined the practice of
law with that furniture in place and with a shared understanding that these institutions together form
our legal system (Ronald Dworkin, Laws Empire (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press,
1986) at 91). Finnis accepts that the central case of law and legal system is the law and legal system
of a complete community, yet concludes that we must not take the pretensions of the modern state at
face value since there are relationships between men which transcend the boundaries of all poleis,
realms or states (Finnis, supra note 20 at 148, 149). A place thus opens for tradition, though the
concept of tradition defended in this paper is broader and more abstract than the particular tradition
that is the object of re-presentation by Finnis.
23 Hart, supra note 16 at v. On this statement, see William Twining, Globalisation and Legal Theory
(London: Butterworths, 2000) at 36 (This statement has provoked hoots of derision from the
sociologically inclined, but little analysis).
H.P. GLENN LEGAL SYSTEMS AND LEGAL TRADITIONS
2005]
definitions of legal content, but also moral or normative definitions of a legal system.
There could be slippage from one to the other. A legal system would simply exist as
an analytical or described phenomenon. The presumption of the existence of such
systems is explicitly stated by Hart later in his book, when he states that the purpose
of the book is not to provide a definition of law, but to advance legal theory by
providing an improved analysis of the distinctive structure of a municipal legal
system …24
869
There are at least three problems with this position. The first has been the object
of comment and is to the effect that Hart inevitably slips from pure description to
normative argument in his presentation. In stating that a legal system eliminates
defects of uncertainty, stasis and inefficiency in primitive communities,25 Hart
would be necessarily arguing for a superior type of law produced by a legal system.26
In arguing that users of the rules of a legal system adopt an internal point of view
according to which the rules are guides to the conduct of social life,27 Hart would be
adopting a normative view both of persons and of law, as fulfilling a function of
guidance through the providing of reasons.28
These claims of the actually normative character of Harts work are disputed by
some, who claim, in defence of Hart, that the conceptual or descriptive must precede
the normative, and that something must be capable of existence before it can be
normatively defended.29 It would be possible to be descriptive or analytical. Here the
second problem with Harts position arises, which is that even if one accepts that
Harts argument is as analytical and descriptive as it is possible to be, the assertion of
an allegedly true description is itself a normative proposition. There has been debate
amongst positivists (Austin, Kelsen, Hart, most notably) as to the nature of positive
law and a legal system. These are competing descriptions, and we have no way of
24 Hart, supra note 16 at 17.
25 Ibid. at 91-94.
26 See Jeremy Waldron, Normative (or Ethical) Positivism in Coleman, Harts Postcript, supra
note 10, 410 at 430. Given Harts view that his concept of law eliminates specific defects of pre-
legal societies, and is therefore superior in nature, it does not appear possible to treat Harts use of the
word primitive as simply quaint and suggesting no particular interpretation of human
flourishing, as proposed in Leighton Moore, Description and Analysis in The Concept of Law: A
Response to Stephen Perry (2002) 8 Legal Theory 91 at 111.
27 Hart, supra note 16 at 90.
28 See Stephen R. Perry, Holmes versus Hart: The Bad Man in Legal Theory in Steven J. Burton,
ed., The Path of the Law and Its Influence: The Legacy of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2000) 158 at 169; Stephen R. Perry, Harts Methodological Positivism
(1998) 4 Legal Theory 427, especially at 438-39. Perry finds normativity in what he describes as
Harts conceptual analysis though a descriptive-explanatory method, which can also be found in
Hart, would be merely evaluative. Yet both entail critical judgment in choosing amongst constructed
models of law.
29 See Coleman, Incorporationism, supra note 22 at 110, 111; and see Jules L. Coleman, Markets,
Morals and the Law (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988) at 11 (the separability thesis
can stand on its own).
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ascertaining that any one of them is truly descriptivethat is, corresponding with a
given, true nature of a legal system. Neil MacCormick has said that [l]egal systems
are not solid and sensible entities. They are thought-objects, products of particular
discourses rather than presuppositions of them.30 There are thus chosen claims of
description, each one of which may exhibit, as MacCormick states, a certain
persuasiveness as a descriptive account.31 The legal system would thus be an
essentially contested concept, understandable only in terms of its different historical
understandings.32 In France, Michel Villey has written that le juriste dfend une
cause. Dcrire pour lui cest choisir.33
The final problem with Harts effort to avoid the normative in describing legal
systems has received less attention from legal philosophers. It concerns the internal
characteristics of a legal system, not in terms of any moral content of its rules, but in
terms of that which a system necessarily entails in terms of coherence, consistency,
and completeness. Hart does not appear to discuss this, yet as a problem it has
received enormous attention from those responsible in some way for the functioning
of legal systems. There has been perhaps more attention in civil law jurisdictions than
in common law ones, but it has been stated that the deductive character of a formal
system constitutes its primary constitutive characteristic.34 Others emphasize
30 Neil MacCormick, Questioning Sovereignty: Law, State, and Nation in the European
Commonwealth (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999) at 113.
31 MacCormick, ibid. at 78. See also Sean Coyle, Hart, Raz and the Concept of a Legal System
(2002) 21 Law & Phil. 275 at 282 (an uncontroversial theoretical characterization of a (domestic)
legal system is precisely what we do not have: Razs momentary orders, Harts union of primary and
secondary rules and MacCormicks institutional facts are all attempts to bring a single theoretical
framework to bear upon the intuitive conception we have of law …); Grard Timsit, Systme in
Denis Alland and Stphane Rials, eds., Dictionnaire de la culture juridique (Paris: Presses
Universitaires de France, 2003) at 1462 (frequency of use of the concept would be equalled only by
the disparity of meanings attributed to it).
32 For the essentially contested concept, see Jeremy Waldron, Is the Rule of Law an Essentially
Contested Concept (in Florida?) (2002) 21 Law & Phil. 137, notably at 148ff. with references;
William E. Connolly, The Terms of Political Discourse, 2d ed. (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1983), especially at 22-23 (essentially contested concepts are typically appraisive; designation acts
both to describe and to ascribe a value; to describe is always to characterize a situation from the
vantage point of certain interets, purposes, or standards).
33 Michel Villey, Leons dhistoire de la philosophie du droit, rev. ed. (Paris: Dalloz, 1962) at 292. I
am grateful to Jean-Franois Gaudreault-DesBiens for this reference, in his Identitarisation du droit et
perspectivisme pistmologique: Quelques jalons pour une saisie juridique complexe de lidentitaire
(2000) 13 Can. J. L. & Jur. 33 at n. 1. See also A.W.B. Simpson, The Common Law and Legal
Theory in A.W.B. Simpson, ed., Oxford Essays in Jurisprudence, 2d series (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1973) 77 at 80 ([t]hough purporting to be an observation, [legal positivism] is best viewed as a
dogma); and for a contemporary philosophical view that evaluation and description are interwoven
and interdependent, see Hilary Putnam, The Collapse of the Fact/Value Dichotomy (Cambridge,
Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2002) at 3 and 63 (the terms one uses even in description in history
and sociology and the other social sciences are invariaby ethically coloured …).
34 Michel van de Kerchove & Franois Ost, Le systme juridique entre ordre et dsordre (Paris:
Presses Universitaires de France, 1988) at 67 (le caractre dductif dun systme formel constitue son
H.P. GLENN LEGAL SYSTEMS AND LEGAL TRADITIONS
2005]
consistency and a lack of internal contradictions.35 Laws would therefore be non-
systematic because of their refusal to adhere to formal criteria of internal logic,36
which is not one of Harts conditions. The line between non-system and system
would be always unclear since there are infinite degrees of systematic treatment.37
Lawyers would thus exhibit a disposition to regard inconsistency and insufficient
coherence as defects of [the] system.38 The idea of a legal system would therefore be
inherently normative, in terms of what a system has to be. This may perhaps not be
morality, but it does imply evaluation of the content of the system.
871
There is therefore vigorous debate on the first claim of Hart that he is engaged in
analysis or descriptive sociology. In the result, however, the reasons for the existence
of a legal system are not a primary concern or product of the debate. The claim to
description or analysis has shifted attention, even though the claim is an inherently
normative one. This has important consequences for the ongoing influence of the idea
of a legal system in the world, which becomes evident in considering, or attempting
to describe, a legal tradition.
There is a tradition in the western world of being untraditional.39 This is
sometimes referred to as modernism and sometimes as postmodernism, but its origins
would lie well back in time, probably to the Greek mathematicians who thought in
terms of numerical discontinuity. They accepted the existence of integers and
fractions clearly distinct from one another, but refused to contemplate real numbers,
expressed in decimals, or irrational numbers, such as the square root of 2. Real or
irrational numbers would extend infinitely and destroy the sharp edges necessary for
calculation.40 We owe the notion of incommensurability to this type of thinking.
premier trait constitutif). The common law is increasingly sympathic to this view. See Peter Birks,
Introduction in Peter Birks, ed., English Private Law, vol. 1 (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2000) xxxv at li (the taxonomic debate among scholars has not been sufficiently vigorous. … [I]f it
turns its back on that debate, the common law will dissolve into incoherence).
35 Ricardo Caracciolo, La nocin de sistema en la teora del derecho, 2d ed. (Mexico: Fontamara,
1999) at 9.
36 See, for the non-systemic character of Roman law, Jean Gaudemet, Tentatives de systmatisation
du droit Rome in Le systme juridique, supra note 3, 11 at 28; A. Cock Arango, El Derecho
Romano se form a base de realidades objetivas no por teoras o sistemas in Studi in onore di
Vincenzo Arangio-Ruiz (Naples: Jovene, 1953) at 31.
37 T. Viehweg, Topics and Law, trans. by W. Cole Durham, Jr. (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1993) at 54;
and see, for the systematizing thrust of the shift in language from the storytelling (If a man steals a
sheep …) to the categorical (Whoever steals a sheep …), David Daube, Ancient Jewish Law: Three
Inaugural Lectures (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1981) at 72-73.
38 Aleksander Peczenik, Unity of the Legal System in Wermer Krawietz, Neil MacCormick &
Georg Henrik von Wright, eds., Prescriptive Formality and Normative Rationality in Modern Legal
Systems: Festschrift for Robert S. Summers (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1994) 71 at 75; and see van
de Kerchove & Ost, supra note 34 at 28 for the idea that systematization necessarily implies
elimination of certain faults of the system, such as redundancy or an excess of casuistry.
39 See Harold Rosenberg, The Tradition of the New (New York: Horizon Press, 1959).
40 See William R. Everdell, The First Moderns: Profiles in the Origins of Twentieth-Century
Thought (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997) notably at 33-35, 351ff.
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Geometric proportions that could not be expressed in terms of whole numbers, such
as those of the diameter and side of a regular pentagon, would be incommensurable,
lacking a common (crude) means of measure.41 The autonomous number is the
predecessor of the autonomous individual; incommensurability is the rejection of
interdependence. The
the
attachmentsto others, to the environment, to the pastthat would characterize
other, contextual, traditional societies. Yet the concept of the independent, modern
individual is not invented afresh by each one of its millions of contemporary
instantiations. There is reliance, implicit or explicit, on the teaching that has gone
before, and particularly that which teaches the concepts of modernity and
postmodernity. This teaching is today unavoidable in the western world. Most people
simply absorb it and act upon it. It teaches that they neednt ask where it came from.
thus free of
independent, modern
individual
is
Traditional western thinking would thus be locked in an antagonistic relationship
with the concept of tradition. It rejects it, but cannot escape it. So there is a tradition
of modernity, characterized by its ongoing denial of its own historical roots.42 There
are reasons moreover for this denial by western thought of its own past. For Edward
Shils, the societies of the ancien rgime were repugnant to rationalists and the best
means of their destruction, as traditional societies, was through destruction of the idea
of tradition itself.43 Other traditions, less conflicted with themselves, would be more
reconciled to their own traditional character. Yet if tradition is to be urged as a means
of supplanting the idea of a legal system in some measure, or providing support for it,
this requires consideration of the nature of tradition, what it is.
The word tradition comes to us from the Latin traditio, meaning transfer or
transmission or conveyance. The concept has been influenced by the word, and some
have maintained that tradition is the process of communication of knowledge,
doctrine, or technique.44 Others have said that tradition is an indefinite series of
repetitions of an action,45 though this would appear to conflate tradition with reaction
to it. In law, however, it has been said that tradition, and law itself, is something
which has come down to us from the past.46 This would capture the idea of tradition
as information and would allow us to make some analytically useful distinctions in
understanding the functioning of tradition.
41 See Ruth Chang, Introduction in Ruth Chang, ed., Incommensurability, Incomparability, and
Practical Reason (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1997) at 1; Victor J. Katz, A History
of Mathematics: An Introduction, 2d ed. (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1998) at 50, 51.
42 See Sang-Ki Kim, Confucian Capitalism: Recycling Traditions (1992-93) 94 Telos 18 at 19.
43 Edward Shils, Tradition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981) at 6.
44 See Romila Thapar, Tradition in Romila Thapar, Cultural Transaction and Early India:
Tradition and Patronage (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1994) 7 at 8.
45 See J.G.A. Pocock, Time, Institutions and Action: An Essay on Traditions and the
Understanding in Preston King & B. C. Parekh, eds., Politics and Experience: Essays Presented to
Professor Michael Oakeshott (London: Cambridge University Press, 1968) 209 at 212.
46 A.W.B. Simpson, Invitation to Law (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1988) at 23.
873
H.P. GLENN LEGAL SYSTEMS AND LEGAL TRADITIONS
2005]
If tradition is seen as information, it must be the object of transmission or traditio
if it is to continue to function as an operative or living tradition. Tradition would be
thus distinct from the process of its own transmission and maintenance. It would be
then for us to decide what to do in particular situations, faced with the teaching of
tradition and its availability to us, through transmission. In the absence of
transmission, or in the absence of our acting in conformity with it, it could not be said
that a tradition was a living tradition. It would be dead information, either because it
was buried or locked up or forgotten, as with tablets covered over with sand or as
with languages dead and forgotten, or because it no longer attracted adherence. Many
traditions have thus died, though some may be in states of suspended animation, as
where their information is still available and may one day begin again to attract
adherence. This would be the process of returning to the sources, or origins. It is vital
to dispossessed aboriginal peoples, among others.47
How can a living tradition be analyzed or described? There must first be
information derived from what we know as the past. Tradition itself entails no
specific requirement as to how old the information must be in order to be recognized
as traditional. This will depend on the tradition, and some traditions have been
successful in preserving information of very great age. Information that is very recent
may also be important in the functioning of a tradition, either because it confirms or
explicates older, more general information, or because it may even be the information
that will generate, over time, a new tradition. In the latter case, only time will allow
us to distinguish between a genuine tradition and simple movements, fads or fashions.
Tradition is thus necessarily diachronic in character. It is very different from the idea
of a momentary legal system, the law that would be in force at a given time.48
Understanding tradition would be like looking at a film; understanding a momentary
legal system would be like looking at a single frame of a film.
How does the transmission or traditio of information occur? Most of the
information generated by the world has disappeared forever, victim to the irresistible
forces of entropy. In Robert Altmans film Cookies Fortune (1999), there is a plaque
in a very famous village that reads, sarcastically, On this site, in 1897, nothing
happened. Of course, something did happen on that site in 1897, but it was not
captured. We cannot ourselves remember what we did last Tuesday. Students take
notes of only parts of lectures. Some of the information lost is noise that no one will
miss. Other lost information is valuable and its loss is much regretted. Some
information is in between, as with the lives of ordinary people, which social
historians must then painfully attempt to reconstruct. So the first element of traditio is
necessarily found in the capture of information. It is capture that allows us to retain
and control information, and this may eventually allow others to access it. We capture
47 For a systemic view, however, of the effect of discontinuity (extinguishment of title), see Yorta
Yorta Aboriginal Community v. Victoria (2002), 194 A.L.R. 538, [2002] HCA 58.
48 See Joseph Raz, The Concept of a Legal System, 2d ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980) at 34
[Raz, System]; Joseph Raz, The Authority of Law: Essays on Law and Morality (Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1979) at 81 [Raz, Authority].
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information through language that is stored by memory, by writing on objects or in
books, by codes stored through magnetic means on physical supports. Much can be
said of each of these different means of capture.49 They are all subject to much
refinementwhose words shall be memorized, what are the techniques of memory,
what shall be written down and by whom, how and by what means do we ensure
access to codified language? Traditions differ in their responses to these questions,
yet as traditions they must necessarily commit to particular means of capture.
Otherwise their information is lost and they will die.
Given captured information, available to us from the past, we must still have
means of accessing and using it. This may require special education and, in the case
of magnetically stored information, special equipment. We may need machines to
read for us. Accessing information is however distinct from its use, and there may be
special qualifications or special techniques for use, as where legal professionals, and
only legal professionals, are permitted to engage in debate as to the true meaning of
texts, before a decision maker. These are very much characteristics of a living
tradition, with the result that present decisions made, in reliance on the information of
the tradition, become themselves subject to it. Capture then again takes place, of
present adherence to the tradition. The mass of information of the tradition is then
enhanced in terms both of its size and of its legitimacy. A living tradition thus
functions by way of a continual reflexive process, through looping or feedback.
It is evident that the information of a tradition must contain both substantive or
primary information, that which the tradition is meant to provide, and also
information concerning the survival of the tradition. This latter information deals with
the primary information to be captured, its means of capture, and the means of
accessing and using it. It could be qualified as secondary information, though this
somehow undermines its importance. So it becomes evident that tradition, as a
concept, is as analytically complex as Harts structure of primary and secondary rules
and is even larger and more encompassing. Hart saw the law of primitive
communities as static in the absence of secondary rules. Secondary rules, moreover,
could only designate written primary rules.50 Yet we now see that such different
traditions necessarily have secondary mechanisms, though they may be different in
character in refusing, for example, written forms of capture. Traditions that have
endured over time are thus necessarily complex in their structures, though the
structures may not be institutionalized in form.
To what extent is the preceding discussion an analytical and descriptive statement
of the notion of tradition? There are certainly analytical and descriptive elements of it,
49 See H. Patrick Glenn, Legal Traditions of the World, 2d ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2004) at 7-11 [Glenn, Legal Traditions]; and for law resting on mountains of inherited tradition,
preserved, referred and deferred to by highly developed institutions and practices of tradition-
maintenance, see Martin Krygier, Law as Tradition (1986) 5 Law & Phil. 237 at 256.
50 For the restrictive character of Harts rules, see text accompanying notes 119-21.
875
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as there are analytical and descriptive elements of the notion of a legal system.51 Yet,
as in Harts description, there are evaluative or normative elements in the description.
The diachronic nature of tradition would allow better understanding than the
synchronic nature of momentary legal systems. A living tradition would be better, or
more useful, than a dead tradition. The concept of tradition would be broader, more
inclusive, and more conciliatory than the concept of legal systems. Tradition
conceived as information would be more persuasive than tradition conceived as
traditio or repetition. More generally, as we will see, tradition is a highly normative
concept.52 So tradition can be analytically and descriptively presented, but it is, more
recognizably than the notion of a legal system, an argument. There is no need to
speak of tradition in purely descriptive terms. It contains arguments, and can be seen
as argument, extended over time.53 Tradition thus provides an argument for legal
systems (as well as for other types of law), and teaching this allows us to not simply
describe legal systems, but to better understand their historic and present status.
Since Hart claimed to be descriptive, however, it followed that there had to be a
statement of the conditions of existence of a legal system.
B. The Existence of a Legal System
Following a line of thought derived most immediately from Bentham, Austin, and
Kelsen,54 Hart looked to the social fact of obedience on the part of the population as
the essential test of existence of a system. He stated this generally to the effect that
obedience on the part of the bulk of the population is all the evidence we need …55
Yet, refining the test to correspond to his notion of primary and secondary rules, he
went on to state that such evidence is not all that is needed to describe the relationships
to law involved in the existence of a legal system. Adequate description also involved
a statement of the relevant relationship of the officials of the system to the secondary
rules that concern them as officials.56 Hence he eventually concluded that there are
two minimum conditions necessary and sufficient for the existence of a legal
system. On the one hand, those rules of behaviour which are valid according to
the systems ultimate criteria of validity must be generally obeyed, and, on the
other hand, its rules of recognition specifying the criteria of legal validity and
its rules of change and adjudication must be effectively accepted as common
public standards of official behaviour by its officials.57
51 See supra text accompanying notes 23-38.
52 See discussion under heading I.C, below.
53 This is, of course, the idea of tradition defended by Alasdair C. MacIntyre in Whose Justice?
Which Rationality? (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1988), notably at 8.
54 See, for the evolution, Raz, System, supra note 48 at 6-7, 93.
55 Hart, supra note 16 at 114.
56 Ibid.
57 Ibid. at 116.
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We will return to the question of why such rules are or should be followed, and
whether such questions are important. The basic idea, for the moment, would be the
general habit of obedience that underlies a legal system.58
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As there are problems with the notion of description in general, however, there
are also problems with this description of the conditions of existence of a legal
system. The first is that which we have already encountered, to the effect that all
efforts of description of a legal system are inherently normative. Positivists thus allow
us to say that a system is immoral but not that it is not obeyed, since it would then not
be a legal system. This would be contrary to the spirit of positivism, for which the
existence of law is one thing and its function is another.59 The more truly positivist
position would abandon the condition of efficacy, and this would allow us to
conclude that legal systems can exist which are ineffective, corrupt, and even
rapacious.60 This too, however, is a normative position, standing most sharply in
contrast to non-written or religious laws, the necessary content of which is
incompatible with corruption or rapacious conduct. Many will prefer the implicit
normativity of Hart to the implicit normativity of such unstructured, conventionalist
positivism. Neither, however, can be taken as simple description, and neither provides
reasons for their implicit normativity.
The second problem is one to which Hart refers, though only to dismiss it
summarily. He states that the question of how many people must obey, and how often
and for how long, are not definite matters; they need not worry us more than the
question as to the number of hairs a man may have and still be bald.61 The existence
of a rule would therefore be compatible with the existence of a minority who not
only break the rule but refuse to look upon it as a standard either for themselves or
others.62 Hart cannot have been ignorant that his statement of the self-evident
character of baldness is formulated in terms reminiscent of the sorites paradox of
Greek philosophy. If you remove a grain of sand at a time from a heap of sand, at
what point do you no longer have a heap? The point of the discussion relates not to
baldness, or sand, but to the justification of binary logic and the Aristotelian rule of
the excluded middle. Must we choose between baldness and non-baldness, a heap or
a non-heap, or are there gradations of each, with a middle point between them, such
that the inherent notions or sets are imprecise? Contemporary fuzzy or multivalent
logic argues for fuzzy sets and the arbitrariness of the boundaries of fixed entities or
concepts.63 It is a very serious debate, but Hart clearly felt sufficiently sure of his
binary logic, and the visibility of a general habit of obedience, to dismiss problems
58 Ibid. at 24, citing Austin.
59 See Tamanaha, supra note 11 at 11-12.
60 See Tamanaha, ibid. at 12-13, 19-20.
61 Hart, supra note 16 at 56.
62 Ibid.
63 See Bart Kosko, Fuzzy Thinking: The New Science of Fuzzy Logic (New York: Hyperion, 1993);
Timothy Williamson, Vagueness (London: Routledge, 1994); Timothy A.O. Endicott, Vagueness in
Law (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000).
H.P. GLENN LEGAL SYSTEMS AND LEGAL TRADITIONS
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of degree as inconsequential. He later spoke of the pathology of legal systems, as in
cases of revolution or enemy occupation or banditry, but the uncertainty of such
situations were of short duration and therefore were not incompatible with the
existence of a legal system.64
877
Today, however, the existence of legal systems in the world is in many cases very
questionable, precisely because of doubt as to levels of obedience. What level of
corruption in a judiciary is incompatible with the existence of an efficacious legal
system? It is today said that corruption of the judiciary in the Commonwealth, where
there is a strong tradition of an independent judiciary, is increasing.65 Neither Hart,
nor any other positivist legal theorist, has provided the means of knowing, in terms of
efficacy, whether a given legal system exists or not. Joseph Raz has given most
consideration to the question, and has concluded that no method of computation can
make much sense.66 We are left with no reasons for knowing why a legal system
should exist, and no effective means of knowing when a legal system exists. This in
itself will have consequences for the phenomenon of obedience.
The existence of a tradition can also be seen in certain circumstances as a positive
phenomenon. Since tradition is information, the disappearance of the information of a
tradition would necessarily mean that the tradition no longer exists. This might be
demonstrated by showing, for example, in the case of a written tradition, that all of
the books of the tradition had been burned, or been eaten by moths. Yet tradition need
not be thought of as a positive phenomenon, nor as either existing or not existing.
Tradition exists as other than a positive phenomenon since information need not
be identified with its physical means of support. It may not even have such a support,
as in the case of oral tradition. Or it can survive after destruction of physical means of
support, if the memory of its adherents is up to the task. The ideas of a tradition thus
have a life of their own and will lead the same wraith-like existence as do all ideas.67
64 Hart, supra note 16 at 118.
65 See Nihal Jayawickrama, Combatting Corruption in the Judiciary: Need for New Strategies The
Commonwealth Lawyer 10:2 (2001) 23, citing the Centre for the Independence of Judges and
Lawyers, associated with the International Commission of Jurists in Geneva, that out of 48 countries
covered in its annual report for 1999, judicial corruption was pervasive in 30. See also the
Transparency International Corruption Perceptions Index 2004 (available online: Transparency
International
listed obtained a score of 5 or higher.
66 Raz, System, supra note 48 at 203 (asking how to calculate the effect of multiple violations of
speeding laws, or the number of opportunities to obey the law). See also Raz, Authority, supra note 48
at 42 ([e]fficacy is the least controversial of these conditions. Oddly enough it is also the least studied
and least understood. Perhaps there is not much which legal philosophy can contribute in this
respect); and see Coyle, supra note 31 at 282, for rejection of thinking of laws more or less as legal
systems in the absence of an uncontroversial theoretical characterization of a legal system.
67 It is true that some physical scientists would see memes, or units of information, as comparable
to genes in terms of their capacity of survival. Memes would also be physical in character, since they
can exist only on physical means of support or in brains. In brains they would be self-replicating
structures in the nervous system. See Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene (Oxford: Oxford University
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This is how there can be traditions in states of suspended animation. No one might
presently adhere to them, but present inefficacy cannot be taken as death, or
inexistence. If the information is available, adherence remains possible and some
languages, for example, have been the objects of major efforts of revivification. A
tradition may therefore exist, even if we have presently lost all of its particular
manifestations. This is an advantage of the accommodating nature of the concept of
tradition. It is also a reason for speaking of tradition in terms of information and not
in terms of knowledge.
Moreover, the nature of traditions means that we are not faced with a binary
choice between their existence or non-existence. A particular tradition may fail and
die, but the result is not an absence of tradition. Another tradition will take its place.
Anthony Kronman has written that it is [r]emembrance and fame, the work of
conservation, the linkage of the generations that define a uniquely human world in
which neither gods or animals appear.68 Being human means living in a world of
communicable and communicated non-genetic information, living within a tradition
or traditions. Whether a particular tradition is a living one, moreover, is a matter of
degree. There are traditions that are losing their grip, others that are in ascendancy. So
their existence is more a matter of influence than of verifiable or categorical data.
This means that the great divergencies in efficacy of the laws of the world do not
have to be somehow crammed into the categories of existing or non-existing legal
systems. There can be healthy and unhealthy legal systems, ones that satisfy more or
less the citizens expectation of impartial justice. Very refined gradations are here
possible, as degrees of perception of corruption can be measured on a scale from 1 to
10.69 It is appropriate to speak of the high degree of effectiveness of oral legal
traditions.70
Positivism thus would rely exclusively on the notion of a legal system but would
be unable to tell us why legal systems exist or when they exist.71 Tradition would tell
Press, 1976) at 206-207. This view raises large questions as to the nature of the human mind. We are,
moreover, far removed from the social facts that would control the existence of a legal system.
Other scientific explanations allow for ongoing existence of beliefs and memories as collections of
information … residing in patterns of activity and structure in the brain and there being the object of
computational-like activity: Steven Pinker, The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature
(London: Penguin Books, 2002) at 32.
68 Anthony T. Kronman, Precedent and Tradition (1990) 99 Yale L.J. 1029 at 1065.
69 See supra note 65.
70 Walter O. Weyrauch & Maureen Anne Bell, Autonomous Lawmaking: The Call of the
Gypsies in Walter O. Weyrauch, ed., Gypsy Law: Romani Legal Traditions and Culture (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 2001) at 62 [emphasis added].
71 See text accompanying note 66. On the tendency of legal philosophers to cling dogmatically to
classificatory ideas, rejecting analysis of legal systems as matters of degree, see Klaus Fsser,
Farewell to Legal Positivism: The Separation Thesis Unravelling in Robert P. George, The
Autonomy of Law: Essays on Legal Positivism (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996) 119 at 124, and at
155, n. 17 (Dworkin opposing Fullers non-classificatory proposals); and see, for rejection of more or
less reasoning about legal systems not on the basis of classificatory ideas but on their absence, or at
least the absence of a non-controversial characterization of a legal system, Coyle, supra note 31 at
H.P. GLENN LEGAL SYSTEMS AND LEGAL TRADITIONS
2005]
us why they exist and would provide some measure of understanding of the extent of
their existence. This would flow from the normativity of tradition, and this too can
and should be taught in contemporary legal education.
879
C. An Obligation to Obey the Law?
In the common law tradition there has been much talk, since the early nineteenth
century, of binding law.72 The expression is closely linked to the nineteenth-century
emergence of stare decisis. Most frequently, first-instance judges have been said to be
bound by decisions of the (new) courts of appeal. The expression was therefore
extremely useful in articulating relations between the units of the newly hierarchical
common law court system. It also appeared to fit nicely with the Austinian command
theory, higher courts issuing commands in the form of formal orders and lower courts
being obliged (somehow) to follow the commands. The expression remains
profoundly rooted in common law language and is a good example of how simple
ideas prevail over complex ones. The idea of binding law has therefore been
successful over some time. It is, however, incompatible with the idea of positive law
and a legal system, as these concepts are explained by legal theory, and may now be
reaching the end of its career.73
How can a legal system create binding law? There are two dimensions to the
problem, which correspond to Harts primary and secondary rules. How can primary
rules be considered binding, for the population at large? How can secondary rules be
considered binding, for the legal officials charged with their application?
Hart is very clear that primary rules are directed to citizens at large and not
simply to legal officials. He states that citizens are expected without the aid of
intervention of officials to understand the rules and to see that the rules apply to them
and to conform to them.74 Rules may even be conceived and spoken of as imposing
obligations,75 and Hart recognizes that it is possible that private citizens adopt an
282. This view, however, would ignore the possibility of conceiving of Harts view of a system as
itself a tradition, capable of being more or less fulfilled in given cases, as to which see text
accompanying note 147. Compare Finnis, supra note 20 at 280 (It is a philosophical mistake to
declare, in discourse of the latter kinds, that a social order or set of concepts must either be law or not
be law, be legal or not legal).
72 For the emergence of the expression, see Jim Evans, Change in the Doctrine of Precedent during
the Nineteenth Century in Laurence Goldstein, ed., Precedent in Law (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1987) 35 at 68.
73 See Leslie Green, The Authority of the State (Oxford: Clarendon, 1988) at 247 (idea of a general
obligation to obey law eventually to lose any explanatory or ideological value it may once have
had). Religion too was initially conceived as binding. This is the etymological origin of the word,
derived from the Latin ligare, to bind. In many instances today, however, the word no longer fulfills
its mission.
74 Hart, supra note 16 at 38-39.
75 Ibid. at 86.
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internal point of view of acceptance of the rules.76 It eventually becomes clear,
however, that this internal point of view on the part of the citizenry is not
fundamental to the existence of a legal system. What is essential is the social fact of
obedience and Hart acknowledges that citizens may obey [the law] for a variety of
different reasons, including the consequences of disobedience.77 The test would be
empirical and not normative. People may obey for many reasons; what is essential is
their obedience; there is nothing in the law or in the existence of a legal system that in
itself would oblige. Facts do not give rise to obligations.
The absence of a general obligation to obey the law in legal systems has become
much clearer in subsequent positivist legal writing. Joseph Raz is very clear that there
may be prudential reasons for obedience to the law but that these do not provide
an adequate foundation for an obligation to obey the law, and this even in a good
legal system.78 Raz also allows that respect for the law may be a reason for obeying
it and that this may be expressed as an obligation. Respect would be a source of
obligation.79 Yet here again the test is empirical. Respect may or may not exist; we
may speak of obligation only if it does exist. Otherwise there is no obligation to obey.
Others acknowledge an obligation to obey specific laws, because of their moral
content, while still denying a general obligation to obey the law.80 Nor would
consensual or utilitarian considerations be adequate to found a general obligation of
obedience, since these criteria yield to empirical circumstances and consequences.81
Is the situation different for officials and judges charged with application of the
law? Their perspective is different from that of the citizen, according to Hart, since it
is a condition of the existence of a legal system that its secondary rules are
effectively accepted as common public standards of official behaviour by its
officials.82 Officials, unlike citizens, must adopt an internal point of view with
76 Ibid. at 90 (an external point of view cannot reproduce the way in which rules function as rules
in the lives of those normally in the majority. These are the officials, lawyers, or private persons who
use them …).
77 Ibid. at 112, 114; and see Caracciolo, supra note 35 at 72 (identifying fear or inertia as grounds of
obedience). Kelsen too speaks of an obligation to obey the law, but a legal obligation is nothing else
but the positive legal norm which commands the behavior of an individual by attaching a sanction to
the opposite behavior … [T]he concept of legal obligation is determined. It is fundamentally connected
with that of the sanction; the necessary effectiveness of the system is thus dependent on obedience,
as with Hart: Hans Kelsen, Pure Theory of Law, trans. by Max Knight (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1967) at 116.
78 Raz, Authority, supra note 48 at 242, 244-45; and see Matthew H. Kramer, In Defense of Legal
Positivism: Law Without Trimmings (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999) at 256, 266.
79 Raz, Authority, supra note 48 at 250, 259-60.
80 See M.B.E. Smith, Is There a Prima Facie Obligation to Obey the Law? (1973) 82 Yale L.J.
950 at 950; Kenneth Einar Himma, Laws Claim of Legitimate Authority in Coleman, Harts
Postscript, supra note 10, 271 at 288-289; Green, supra note 73.
81 See Smith, supra note 80 at 955, 972; Richard A. Wasserstrom, The Obligation to Obey the
Law in Robert S. Summers, ed., Essays in Legal Philosophy (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1968) 274 at
291, 296.
82 Hart, supra note 16 at 116.
881
H.P. GLENN LEGAL SYSTEMS AND LEGAL TRADITIONS
2005]
respect to the rules of the system, since otherwise the system, inevitably lacking
efficacy, cannot exist. Again, however, Hart does not provide a reason for such
assumptions of obligation. There is thus an explanation of the internal point of view,
without adoption of it.83 There is a system if there is obligation and there is
obligation if there is a system. The system therefore does not impose obligation on its
judges, though they must assume obligation. The essential liberty of the judicial
function is confirmed by positivist acknowledgment that the power of distinguishing
is inconsistent with a notion of systemic judicial obligation.84 Legal systems therefore,
perhaps surprisingly, do not provide any binding obligation to obey the law. This
raises large questions as to whether this position is compatible with law as it is
generally understood.
Traditions exist in the measure that the information they contain can be said to
exist. It must be somehow accessible. What is the nature of this information? David
Novak has said that [t]hinking within the context of a tradition is always an
essentially normative pursuit, whether it advocates do this practically or say this
theoretically.85 Why is a tradition essentially normative? It has to do with the
nature of a tradition. There have to be reasons for the capture of information. It may
be the case that the information is seen as revelatory, as in the case of religious
traditions and religious law. It may be the case, however, that the information is
simply seen as useful, or interesting, or perhaps beautiful. Capture is an indication of
the value of the information captured. This is so whether the information is explicitly
normative, as in the case of legislative acts or judicial decisions, or not explicitly
normative, as where objects of curiosity or beauty are retained. Even here, however,
there is normativity, since the object will teach that which underlies its interest, or
demonstrate that which is aesthetically good. Of course it is true that much junk is
retained or captured, whether in terms of pure information or in terms of material
objects. So it is not simply the initial capture or retention that provides the
normativity of tradition, though this is of fundamental importance. It is also the
duration of the capture that provides much of the normativity or authoritativeness of
the tradition. Junk does not last. That which does last demonstrates its value with
each passing day. Its initial value is enhanced through the growth in its recognition,
through time. Duration and longevity can become the most obvious means of proof of
normative value.
Traditions thus are normative and create obligations. The obligations may or may
not be said to be binding, but there are at least obligations, which is not the case for
legal systems. The obligations of a tradition may be said to be binding when they are
morally imperative or at least justifiable. It is more generally the case, however, that
the obligations of a tradition may be seen as simply persuasive, since the authority of
83 van de Kerchove & Ost, supra note 34 at 29.
84 See Hart, supra note 16 at 135 (on creative or legislative activity of courts by narrowing a
rule or widening it); Raz, Authority, supra note 48 at 186 (given the general power to distinguish,
… precedents are never binding for the courts are always free to change them).
85 David Novak, Natural Law in Judaism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998) at 192.
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tradition is simply persuasive. They are obligations to which we bind ourselves. We
are not forced to do so, and there are no guaranteed sanctions that will punish our
failure to do so. So the world of tradition is an inherently normative world. There are
no brute facts, social or otherwise.
[Vol. 50]
There may, however, be a notion of fact within tradition if there is a particular
tradition that tells us to think in terms of fact. We know this is the case in western
tradition since the construction of the notion of fact, from the legal factum, in the
seventeenth century.86 Within this tradition it is thus appropriate to speak of simple or
social facts, such as a habit of obedience on the part of a population, or custom that
may ground a constitutional normative order.87 Even duration of tradition in time may
be regarded as a fact, in spite of its inherent normativity, and economists display
loyalty to western tradition in discussion of so-called path dependency. A factual or
non-normative tradition, one that speaks in terms of legal systems for example, would
thus not be one that would create, by its own terms, obligation. Yet we have already
seen that this factual or descriptive tradition is challenged in terms of its underlying
normativity.88 And we now understand that it will inevitably be challenged, since it
can exist only as the product of a tradition that argues, tells us, that we should think in
terms of facts. Those who argue that Hart is really normative are recognizing that
Hart speaks for a long, normative tradition that favours the idea of facts. Hart then
favours a particular version of facts. He is choosing by virtue of a long tradition that
tells him so to choose. The debate on this question is of course a primary
characteristic of all traditions. They inspire debate because of their inherently
normative character, whether they are thought of as legal or not.
There are many other arguments, in addition to those that favour the idea of fact,
which support the idea of legal systems. They constitute the normative tradition of
legal systems. In and around the positivist debate there are many references to the
predecessors of Hart, notably Hume and Bentham, who are recognized as having
argued normatively in favour of legal systems.89 There were of course predecessors of
86 See Barbara Shapiro, The Concept Fact: Legal Origins and Cultural Diffusion (1994) 26
Albion 1, reprinted in David Sugarman, ed., Law in History: Histories of Law and Society, vol. 2
(New York: New York University Press, 1996) 245; Barbara J. Shapiro, A Culture of Fact: England,
1550-1720 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2000) at 3, 9, 11, 60, 107, 110 (notion of fact in medieval
common law procedure drawn from Romano-canonical tradition and then adopted by other
disciplines, though fact in law only an issue placed before jury, either fictional or real, and came to
be an established truth only under the influence, notably, of Bacon and Hobbes); R. Dekkers, Le
fait et le droit dans la procdure classique romaine in Travaux du Centre national de recherches de
logique, Le fait et le droit: tudes de logique juridique (Brussels: mile Bruylant, 1961) 15, on
Roman action in factum; MacIntyre, supra note 53 at 357.
87 See MacCormick, supra note 30 at 25.
88 See discussion in Part I.A, above.
89 See e.g. Waldron, supra note 26 at 413; Dyzenhaus, supra note 9 at 708; Benjamin Z. Zipursky,
The Model of Social Facts in Coleman, Harts Postscript, supra note 10, 219 at 255; Gerald J.
Postema, Roots of Our Notion of Precedent in Goldstein, supra note 72, 9 at 13-14; and see Edward
Shils, The Virtue of Civility: Selected Essays on Liberalism, Tradition, and Civil Society, ed. by Steven
883
H.P. GLENN LEGAL SYSTEMS AND LEGAL TRADITIONS
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Hume and Bentham, those who opened the way for the notion of human law and the
exercise of Gods dominion on earth through human agency.90 Hart was able to
operate within this tradition, assuming the existence of a concept of social fact, only
once it had obtained sufficient persuasive authority. This same persuasive authority
led to the adoption of state forms of government throughout Europe, and the
Westphalian system of international law. No one was obliged by hierarchical
authority to adopt these forms of governance: they had simply reached a stage of
sufficient coherence and appropriateness that they could prevail as accepted
tradition.91 So work then began on refining and developing the idea of a legal system,
said to rest on underlying fact.
There is more, however, to legal systems than underlying fact. There is also their
content. And while the theory of legal systems has sought the identification of law by
formal means, those who look to law for guidance must look inevitably beyond the
formal identifiers. They are interested in content as a guide to action. There has been
a debate between positivists and those who defend a necessary moral dimension of
law. Yet much law is not of obvious moral content or significance. It may
nevertheless be highly normative, if only because it has been law, and accepted as
law, for a long time. In the common law, the law of trespass to land may be one of the
best examples, but there are many others. There are traditions of substantive law,
many of which have existed since a time prior to positivism. Of course this may be
seen also as a reason for rejecting them, but there must be powerful reasons for this to
happen. Tradition thus creates a normativity for law even when it is expressed
positively, and denies its own normativity. The legal system would not create
obligation, but obligation would be inherent in the (traditional) law adopted by the
system. Where the law is of a moral dimension, tradition would add to its normativity.
There would thus be an obligation to obey many of Harts primary rules because they
would be the law even were there no legal system as such. Positivism has sought
clearer and more neutral means of identification of law, which is a very praiseworthy
objective. Law cannot be allowed to disappear in a welter of competing normative
claims and a horrifically rising tide of litigation. Yet there is some evidence that legal
systems are not entirely effective against such developments, since they bind no one.
Tradition is much more rigorous, however, in identifying law. It rejects that which
cannot be shown to be deeply rooted. This is why apparently radical movements do
their historical homework, to show they are not simply creations of the moment.
Grosby (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1997) at 110 (The free society must rest, once it comes into
existence, on tradition).
90 See Marie-France Renoux-Zagam, Origines thologiques du concept moderne de la proprit
(Geneva: Droz, 1987); John Finnis, The Truth in Legal Positivism in George, supra note 71 at 195:
positivity first articulated circa 1130 among theological humanists of Paris and Chartres.
91 For the tradition of the state and its legal system, for example, see Alan Harding, Medieval Law
and the Foundations of the State (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002); and for national
constitutional law as a part of a greater body of constitutional tradition that crosses national borders,
see Jaakko Husa, Guarding the Constitutionality of Laws in the Nordic Countries: A Comparative
Perspective (2000) 48 Am. J. Comp. L. 345 at 345.
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Tradition is not inherently conservative, as Edmund Burke made it out to be. It can be
profoundly destabilizing, as the French revolutionaries understood in re-volving, or
returning, to the tradition of Greek rationality as a means of overturning the ancien
regime.92
[Vol. 50]
Tradition may thus add the force of obligation to particular primary rules of
conduct. It is therefore more binding than is the legal system for the ordinary citizen.
Tradition also, moreover, obliges the officials and judges of the legal system, even
though they are not bound by the system itself. This is because there is a tradition of
judging, to which judges must necessarily bind themselves, if they are to judge. It has
been argued that, by undertaking and engaging in judicial practice, there are legal
obligations defined by the rules of the game.93 This, however, appears to miss the
mark, since the judge assumes no obligation to apply the rules of the system, as a
legal obligation, but only to render justice within the framework of the law.94 One
assumes an ethical obligation to seek justice, which may take place within or without
the cadre of the system. This has been the case in western law since the time of the
Roman iudex, who was not to make the litigation his own (litem suam facit)
through imposition of personal views on parties seeking a judicial ruling in law. It is
in the nature of the judicial ethic to judge according to law. There may, depending on
the jurisdiction, even be ethical sanctions for infringement of this judicial ethic,
applied by other judges. They act in virtue of centuries of teaching of what it is to
judge. A momentary legal system adds nothing to this and can add nothing to this. It
may even be said that rules of judicial independence, of the legal system, confirm
this, since the judge is fundamentally unaccountable, except in terms of this ethical
obligation, which in many cases is unwritten. The functioning of the legal system, in
terms of the activities of its officers, thus rests on tradition.
The difficulties of contemporary legal systems are giving rise to increased
reliance on the concept of legal tradition, and this reliance is illustrative of its nature.
In Switzerland and Germany, a major article has recently been published on tradition
and contemporary law, in which it is stated that national legal systems are by their
nature inadequate and therefore in need of complementing through legal tradition.95
National legislation is traditional law, but legislation does not exhaust the sources of
legal tradition, and such sources therefore can and must be resorted to.96 Sources of
legal tradition beyond official state law include legal doctrine, general principles of
law, custom, legislative preparatory work, and foreign law or comparative law.97 We
92 See H.P. Glenn, Law, Revolution and Rights in Werner Maihofer & Gerhard Sprenger, eds.,
Revolution and Human Rights (Stuttgart: F. Steiner, 1990) 9; and for recognition of the potentially
destabilizing effect of tradition, see Glenn, Legal Traditions, supra note 49 at 23-24.
93 Andrei Marmor, Legal Conventionalism in Coleman, Harts Postscript, supra note 10, 193 at 215.
94 Judicial Code of Ethics, R.R.Q. 1981, c. T-16, r. 4.1, s. 1, as to which see H. Patrick Glenn, La
responsabilit des juges (1983) 28 McGill L.J. 228 at 247-48, 251.
95 See Eugen Bucher, Rechtsberlieferung und heutiges Recht [2000] Z. Eu. P. 394.
96 See ibid. at 455-56.
97 See ibid. at 468-87.
885
H.P. GLENN LEGAL SYSTEMS AND LEGAL TRADITIONS
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see here that the legal system, as a particular tradition, is given authority to identify
sources of law, but that where the legal system is demonstrably inadequate, legal
tradition in a broader sense is itself entirely capable of identifying further sources of
law. Much will depend here on particular traditions, and there will be those that insist
on an autonomous concept of law, which may be more or less broadly defined, as
well as those, religious or customary in nature, that see less need to do so. Legal
tradition in its broad sense thus allows a judicious expansion of the sources of
normativity, in a way compatible with, or at least complementary to, particular
traditions. A similar form of reliance on legal tradition is becoming evident in the
common law world. Professor Baker has recently demonstrated that the common law
functioned throughout its history with two bodies of law, both formal and informal,
and that the latter, sustained by the Inns of Court, consisted of a tradition as to what
was received learning and what was dubious.98 Professor Postema has recently stated
a philosophy of the common law, which is in important respects incompatible with
both orthodox natural law thought and with orthodox legal positivism.99 In his view
the common law would consist above all of a practised framework of practical
reasoning that would draw fully on the unwritten common law … deposited in the
experience and memory of practitioners …100 The experience and memory of
common law practitioners exists now of course in multi-jurisdictional form, and
Commonwealth citation practices may be seen as perhaps the best example of the
functioning of legal tradition over and beyond national legal systems. The authority
here is persuasive, but it is unquestionably authority and not simple fact.
There are therefore reasons today for the decline of legal systems. They are
rooted in a particular way of understanding the world that refuses to recognize the
reasons for their existence; their actual existence is increasingly challenged; where
they would exist, they deny their own normativity. The notion of tradition does not
suffer from these problems, and is itself the justification for legal systems and other
forms of law. It also supplements and completes systemic law, which cannot be
understood and taught without understanding the contribution of tradition. This
brings us to the relations of the laws of the world, and the consequences of
conceptualizing law in terms of systems or traditions.
II. The Relations between the Laws of the World
Hart, in the first edition of the The Concept of Law, saw himself as clearly
engaged in a theoretical work of very broad dimensions. He stated that in almost
every part of the world which is thought of as a separate country there are legal
98 J.H. Baker, The Laws Two Bodies: Some Evidential Problems in English Legal History (Oxford:
University Press Oxford, 2001) at 74.
99 Gerald J. Posterma, Philosophy of the Common Law in Coleman & Shapiro, supra note 22,
588 at 599.
100 Ibid. at 596, 594.
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systems which are broadly similar in structure in spite of important differences.101 He
acknowledged that besides the clear standard cases constituted by the legal systems
of modern states, which no one in his senses doubts are legal systems, there were
doubtful cases of [p]rimitive law and international law.102 The notion of legal
system therefore appeared at least potentially adequate to explain these different
forms of law. In his postscript to the second edition, Hart appeared to go still further,
in stating that the book was both general and descriptive. It is general in the sense
that it is not tied to any particular legal system or legal culture, but seeks to give an
explanatory and clarifying account of law as a complex social and political institution
with a rule-governed (and in that sense normative) aspect.103 There is still
ambiguity in this statement, since it could be taken to mean that he is dealing only
with this institutional type of law, wherever found. Yet the title of the book, with its
hugely important definite article, suggests a larger ambition. There would be law, so
defined, and non-law. This raises important questions as to how general Harts thesis
is.
A. General and Particular Jurisprudence
Hart worked within a common law tradition but clearly saw his theory applicable
to legal systems throughout the world, whether of common or civil law origin.
Civilians, however, see Harts concept of law as profoundly marked by common law
experience. This is because his book would represent a shift in perspective, away
from the process of creation of norms (the original legislator) to the process of their
application.104 In speaking of secondary rules composed of rules of recognition,
change, and adjudication, Hart in all cases would have assumed an existing body of
law and directed our attention to the detailed process of working with it. This is of
course important to the civil law world, but ignores the primary preoccupation of that
world with getting the law right in the first place. This would not be the usual
complaint about the hypertrophied role of judges in some Anglo-American views
of law, notably those of so-called realists, but rather a complaint that Hart has not
accurately captured the primary objective or characteristic of many western legal
systems.105 Hart can of course be defended, since his rule of recognition contemplated
legislative activity,106 yet it is true that the perspective is that of the user of the system
and not that of its legislative source. Hart intended to correct the views of Austin,
whose command theory was much influenced by German civilian thought, and
Kelsen, since their legislatively-driven views would represent only a partial
101 Hart, supra note 16 at 3.
102 Ibid.
103 Ibid. at 239. For the notion of general jurisprudence prior to Hart, notably in the writings of
Bentham and Austin, see Twining, supra note 23 at 20-21.
104 See e.g. Caracciolo, supra note 35 at 65.
105 See ibid. at 65-66.
106 Hart, supra note 16 at 94-95.
H.P. GLENN LEGAL SYSTEMS AND LEGAL TRADITIONS
2005]
explanation of a legal system. His own explanation, however, would be equally
partial, and therefore particular.
887
The larger question, of course, is as to the compatibility of the concept of law,
as developed by Hart, with many other types of law in the world, beyond the civil
law. There are many reasons for thinking that Harts concept of law is not sufficiently
general to accommodate them. Many of these reasons serve to distinguish, or
particularize, western concepts of law (whether of civil or common law origin) from
non-western concepts of law.
Harts preoccupation is with the users and officials (or judges) of the system. This
is a perspective of the common law but, in its concentration on judges, it is also a
perspective of western law generally. The civil law places less emphasis on judges but
does consider them to be very important. Why do non-western ways of thinking about
law give less importance to the judge and to rules of adjudication? The main reason
would be found in christianity and in the importance of the notion of the Judgment
of God for the office of the judge. In contrast to other legal traditions, the history of
the function of judging in the civil and common laws would be the history of a
transfer from God to officials.107 Bribes to judges, the principle of reciprocity of
treatment, would have been eliminated only once the model of the perfect justice of a
monotheistic God had been accepted.108 This is found in jewish law, yet christianity
would have been unique in attempting to capture the transcendent character of Gods
justice and in attempting to implement it on earth in the judicial process and in the
contemporary state.109 The device for so doing was initially the ordeal as indicative of
Gods will. Today in German the word for judgment remains Urteil, from the
original germanic ordal.110 The ordeal gave way, in the civil and common laws, to
107 See Robert Jacob, Le jugement de Dieu et la formation de la fonction de juger dans lhistoire
europenne (1995) 39 Archives de philosophie du droit 87 at 90.
108 See John T. Noonan, Jr., God Does Not Take Bribes in John T. Noonan Jr. & Kenneth I.
Winston, The Responsible Judge: Readings in Judicial Ethics (London: Praeger, 1993) 3, citing at 6
Isaiah 1:11-13 (No more shall you trample my courts. The offer of your gifts is useless).
109 See Jacob, supra note 107 at 89 (le jugement de Dieu est une formation culturelle originale qui
singularise la chrtient occidentale et constitue un pisode majeur de la constitution dune culture
juridique europenne) and 95 ([l]histoire judiciaire de lEurope occidentale parat donc …
entirement originale. … Elle seule a labor la liturgie du miracle judiciaire qui permettait de faire de
la prsence de Dieu dans le procs le ressort essentiel de sa dcision).
110 See Jacob, ibid. at 96. The linguistic continuity is evidence of the process of transfer that so
particularizes the European developments. The ordeal existed in other laws, but nowhere outside of
the civil and common laws was there continuity of the idea of religious legitimation, from earlier
forms of the ordeal to the eventual institution of the judge in state law. The jury was an instrument of
continuity, and it has been said that the jury was first seen as a new form of ordeal: Robert Bartlett,
Trial by Fire and Water: The Medieval Judicial Ordeal (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986) at 139, with
references. For the still earlier transformation of the animistic and probably Frankish ordeal to an
instrument of christianity, see Bernard S. Jackson, Evolution and Foreign Influence in Ancient Law
(1968) 16 Am. J. Comp. L. 372 at 380; Bartlett, ibid. at 21 (on [p]icking up a burning brand in the
name of Jesus as a powerful argument in favour of the new faith). In talmudic law there was no
adjudication effected directly by God, as with the ordeal, and if there were some early suggestions of
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the oath of judicial office and, in the common law, to the sworn jury, but all are
evidence of a function or mission profoundly impressed by a particular religious
belief. A legal system characterized by rules of recognition, change, and adjudication
and not by other, more transcendent perspectives, would be possible, or likely, only
within such a historical context.
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Other particular features of Harts legal system relate to the role and nature of the
secondary rules that are at its heart. To the extent such secondary rules would allow
us to identify law with no regard to its content, Harts legal system would create law
unique in the world. The perspective would be particularly that of the common law of
England, in its limited or historical sense. The normative world of England was
already abundant on the arrival of the Normans and their common law could become
common only on condition of respect for, and alliance with, all the other sources of
pre-existing normativity. The common law arguably has been separate from morality
throughout most of its existence, and separate as well from equity, canon law,
maritime law, and custom. It was separated notably by the writ system, and only on
its abolition did it become necessary to formally articulate and justify a separation
thesis. Other legal traditions are characterized not so much by rules of recognition but
by the manner in which a particular source is taken to have necessary substantive, or
moral, content. There is no separation of law and morals in talmudic, islamic, or
hindu law, the other great textual traditions, since religiously inspired law cannot be
neutral with respect to content.111 Nor is such separation possible in the non-formal
legal tradition that is confucianism,112 or in the world of lex non scripta, infused with
notions of respect for a cosmos that constitutes its own form of normativity.113
The existence of secondary rules that are exclusive determinants of what is law
would be therefore a very particular phenomenon. The nature of such rules would
also be suggestive of their particularity. This is particularly so for secondary rules of
change. Hart states that such rules of change are necessary to overcome the static
quality of the regime of primary rules.114 A rule of change is one that would
empower an individual or group to introduce new primary rules and to eliminate old
rules. Is such a rule of change part of a general or particular concept of law? Chthonic
peoples arguably have neither a concept of change (as opposed to a concept of
diversity or flexibility) nor a rule of change.115 Such a rule, and such an
empowerment, would be contrary to the fundamental legal and moral duty of
chthonic law to change nothing in the life of the world. In the laws of jewish, islamic
judicial decisions being divinely inspired, these would have given way to the idea of judicial decisions
based on texts of law, and as such not meriting reporting. See Bernard S. Jackson, Judaism as a
Religious Legal System in Andrew Huxley, ed., Religion, Law and Tradition: Comparative Studies in
Religious Law (London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2002) 34.
111 See Glenn, Legal Traditions, supra note 49 at 101-103 (talmudic law), 186 (islamic law) and
281-83 (hindu law).
112 See ibid. at 319 (on normativity drawn from inherent harmony pre-existing in society).
113 See ibid. at 69 (law inextricably interwoven with beliefs of chthonic peoples).
114 Hart, supra note 16 at 95.
115 See Glenn, Legal Traditions, supra note 49 at 74-77.
H.P. GLENN LEGAL SYSTEMS AND LEGAL TRADITIONS
2005]
and hindu religions there is no legislator, and no state. Nor are judges empowered to
make changes in the law.116 The idea of change in such circumstances goes
underground, to be found only through minute examination of decisions made, and
then only constructed from a presumed hypothesis of what otherwise might have
been. There are no secondary rules of change, no rules of empowerment to alter law
divinely inspired, given such concepts of law.
889
The nature of Harts rules of recognition would appear to be very generally
formulated. He states that the existence of a rule of recognition may take any of a
huge variety of forms, simple or complex117 and that the rule of recognition exists
only as a complex, but normally concordant, practice of the courts, officials, and
private persons in identifying the law …118 This practice could therefore be one that
acknowledges secular or religious rules as law and the notion of a rule of recognition
is therefore not restrictively articulated in formal terms. Yet elsewhere Hart makes it
clear that his notion of a rule of recognition is incompatible with primitive law or
the pre-legal. He states that the step from the pre-legal may take place in
distinguishable stages, of which the first would be the writing of hitherto unwritten
rules.119 The crucial step would be the acknowledgement of reference to the writing
or inscription as authoritative …120 Thus, while the rule of recognition may exist only
as a practice, there can be no primary rules of a system that would be in unwritten
form. Their absence would mean the absence of a formally discernible object of the
rule of recognition, a reversion to the pre-legal. Harts primitive law may originally
have been a doubtful case,121 but the full statement of the conditions of a legal
system take it outside of the, or his, concept of law.
In the result, Harts general jurisprudence is fully compatible only with the
common law tradition, and compatible only in a partial manner with that of the civil
law. It has thus been stated recently that The Concept of Law would have been better
entitled as The Concept of State Law or Elements of State Law,122 just as Alan
Watsons The Evolution of Law123 has been re-entitled, in its expanded edition, The
Evolution of Western Private Law.124 A theory of a legal system could thus be general
in that it claims to be true of all state legal systems,125 but of no more.
116 See ibid. at 110-11 (for an obligation or mitzvah limiting the concept of change in talmudic law),
198-203 (for the subtlety of the notion of change in islamic law, closing of the door of endeavour)
and 287-89 (for the largely meaningless character of change in hindu law).
117 Hart, supra note 16 at 94.
118 Ibid. at 110.
119 Ibid. at 94-95.
120 Ibid. at 95.
121 Supra note 102.
122 See Tamanaha, supra note 11 at 17.
123 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985).
124 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001).
125 See Raz, System, supra note 48 at 1.
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In the world today, only a few decades after Hart wrote, we increasingly see state
legal systems challenged by non-state law. The notion of failed or dysfunctional
states has emerged, with the result that state structures, now seen as a product of
colonialism, are no longer universally applicable on the surface of the earth.126 The
expression post-legal has been used.127 Where states continue a precarious
existence, they may be seen as poisoned gifts, powerful and entirely undemocratic
structures of internal domination.128 They would be susceptible to manipulation by
local legal elites and would themselves demonstrate a lack of ethical and value
content.129 Their mechanics are said to be incapable of providing meaningful
justice; western-style constitutions would produce no social facts, only paper law
and paper rights.130 So the notion of a legal system appears less and less capable of
generalization. It can of course continue to be thought of as an analytical model. Yet
we increasingly see that its particular origins are a profound obstacle to its
widespread application in the world. It simply cannot provide a general explanatory
and clarifying account of law.131
126 See Ruth Gordon, Saving Failed States: Sometimes a Neocolonialist Notion (1997) 12 Am. U.
J. Intl L. & Poly 903; Nii Lante Wallace-Bruce, Of Collapsed, Dysfunctional and Disoriented
States: Challenges to International Law (2000) 47 Nethl. Intl L. Rev. 53; more generally, see Eric
Hobsbawn, in conversation with Antonio Polito, trans. by Allan Cameron, On the Edge of the New
Century (New York: New Press, 2000) at 12-15, 31, 34, 36, and 37: It raises the question of
interaction between the world where the state exists and where it does not. For the majority of states
in Africa south of the Sahara now being in initial, advanced, or complete collapse, see Die Zeit (18
May 2000) 3; and for the failure of state structures ever to have taken hold in the form of a national
legal system in Indonesia, see Adijaya Yusuf, Integrating the Country through Legal Reform: The
Indonesian Experience in Morigiwa Yasutomo, ed., Law in a Changing World: Asian Alternatives
(Stuttgart: F. Steiner, 1998) 110 at 113 (Although steps have been taken, law development has not yet
been able to formulate a national legal system).
127 Keith Culver, Leaving the Hart-Dworkin Debate (2001) 51 U.T.L.J. 367 at 395 (Some of the
most exciting questions and sweeping empirical changes in life under law today are found in precisely
these borderline cases …).
128 Michael Hardt & Antonio Negri, Empire (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2000) at
132-34.
129 James A. Gardner, Legal Imperialism: American Lawyers and Foreign Aid in Latin America
(Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1980) at 11, 266.
130 Werner F. Menski, Comparative Law in a Global Context: The Legal Systems of Asia and Africa
(London: Platinium, 2000) at 202.
131 Hart, supra note 16 at 239. The notion of a legal system, or culture, is also seen as challenged by
transnational legal phenomena. See e.g. Wolf Heydebrand, From Globalisation of Law to Law under
Globalisation in David Nelken & Johannes Feest, Adapting Legal Cultures (Oxford: Hart, 2001) 117
at 131 (it seems that it is no longer possible to talk about the virtues of national legal cultures as
stable and viable entities ready to be compared in the conventional anthropological or sociological
mode, but as rapidly changing and moving objects); H. Patrick Glenn, A Transnational Concept of
Law in Peter Cane & Mark Tushnet, eds., Oxford Handbook of Legal Studies (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2003) 839.
H.P. GLENN LEGAL SYSTEMS AND LEGAL TRADITIONS
2005]
Harts teaching of his particular concept of law and legal system was, however,
very influential, and his claim to generality has not been without effect. Two
consequences of such claims of generality have become evident.
891
The first consequence is the widespread tendency to speak of law of all types and
provenances as systems of law. Even comparative lawyers have succumbed to this
facility of language.132 This extension of the idea of legal system has not been entirely
a question, however, of linguistic facility. Positivist theorists have defended it. The
claim is made, first, that law exists only where a legal system would exist. This may
be seen as an immediate implication of Harts speaking of the concept of law and
relegating non-systemic concepts of law to the non-legal. Joseph Raz has thus stated
that every law necessarily belongs to a legal system (the English, or German, or
Roman, or Canon law, or some other legal system)133 and that a particular law is a
law only if it is part of American law or French law or some other legal system.134
These statements could be interpreted as referring only to legislative enactments and
therefore as being relatively innocuous. Such a benign interpretation, however, is
difficult to square with the reference to Roman law and with more affirmative
statements of positivist theorists. Thus Joseph Raz has stated further that [l]egal
systems are always legal systems of complex forms of social life, such as religions,
states, regimes, tribes, etc.135 There would therefore be no conceptual problems in
extending the concept of system to non-state forms of law.
Joseph Raz has moreover dealt with the methodology of such extension, in
stating that
[t]here is nothing wrong in interpreting the institutions of other societies in
terms of our typologies. This is an inevitable part of any intelligent attempt to
understand other cultures. It does not imply that in interpreting alien institutions
you disregard the intentions, beliefs, or value-schemes of their participants. It
only means that at some stage you classify their activities, thus interpreted, in
terms of a scheme for analysing social institutions of which the participants
themselves may have been ignorant.136
It is noteworthy that there is here no suggestion of later or more developed forms of
mutual comprehension or accommodation. This may be because the notion of system
is too inflexible to allow such comprehension of non-state forms of law in their own
terms. The process described by Joseph Raz would thus be characterized by its
unilateral and inflexible mode, as Edward I would have straitjacketed the categories
132 See e.g. Ren David & John E.C. Brierley, Major Legal Systems of the World: An Introduction to
the Comparative Study of Law, 3d ed. (London: Stevens & Sons, 1985) at 19 (though throughout the
work the concept of system is little used and reference is made more frequently to legal families).
133 Raz, System, supra note 48 at 1.
134 Raz, Authority, supra note 48 at 78.
135 Raz, System, supra note 48 at 188; see also 207: Whether or not two legal systems are
compatible depends first of all on the social forms of organization of which they are part (e.g. the legal
systems of a tribe, a state, a religion, etc.).
136 Raz, Authority, supra note 48 at 50.
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and customs of native Wales within the formulae of English manorial practice.137
Historians examining the relations of the French and the Algonquins in the early
stages of North American colonization also speak of a process by which new people
were crammed into existing categories in a mechanical way (Algonquins as savages,
French as manitous) before a more sophisticated middle ground could be
reached.138
[Vol. 50]
A second consequence of the claim for the generality of legal systems is that the
idea of system becomes much more fluid than in its original conception. If we must
use the idea of system to describe various types of laws, then it is the idea of system
that comes to be adapted. So formal positivism, as envisaged by Hart, yields in many
cases to informal positivism, in which a legal system is conceived not as a formal
relationship between primary and secondary rules, but as an open-ended process that
may eventually come to look like life itself. This is the type of thought underlying
notions of autopoietic systems139 or networks of processes.140 Here hierarchies
become flat141 and the notion of system is expressly acknowledged to be able to
accommodate the most strategic, innovative or rebellious choice-making142 or even
catastrophe.143 The notion of system thus approaches that of culture, criticized
recently as failing to identify any particular factors that could be seen to be making a
difference …144
137 R.R. Davies, Conquest, Coexistence, and Change: Wales 1063-1415 (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1987) at 367; and see R.R. Davies, The First English Empire: Power and Identities in the
British Isles 1093-1343 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000) at 111 for England, notably in its
relations with Wales and Ireland, unable to cope with societies which could not be readily integrated
into its political and governmental configuration.
138 Richard White, The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires and Republics in the Great Lakes Region,
1650-1815 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991) at 50-51; and for French colonial lawyers
eliminating different laws through constant reference to their own, see Charles de Lespinay, Droits
de loralit africaine et traduction francophone, un compromis difficile (2002) 44 Droit et cultures 49.
139 These would be entirely present constructions, cognitively open though identifiable as law
through operative closure. See Niklas Luhmann, Law as a Social System (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2004); Gunther Teubner, Law as an Autopoietic System (Oxford: Blackwell, 1993),
notably at 72 (no binding force), 80 (closure not isolation), and 131 (created anew from moment to
moment).
140 van de Kerchove and Ost, supra note 34 at 10.
141 Barton, supra note 4 at 300 (Each repeating pattern of human interaction becomes its own
sovereign).
142 Sally Falk Moore, History and the Redefinition of Custom on Kilimanjaro in June Starr & Jane
F. Collier, eds., History and Power in the Study of Law: New Directions in Legal Anthropology
(Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989) 277 at 287-88.
143 In mathematics, see Ivar Ikeland, Mathematics and the Unexpected (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1988) at 88-90, 106.
144 Roger Cotterrell, The Concept of Legal Culture in David Nelken, ed., Comparing Legal
Cultures (Aldershot: Dartmouth, 1997) 13 at 20; and more generally, see H. Patrick Glenn, Legal
Cultures and Legal Traditions in Mark van Hoecke, ed., Epistemology and Methodology of
Comparative Law (Oxford: Hart, 2004) 7.
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We saw earlier, however, that Harts structures of a legal system can be situated
within those of traditions. Enduring traditions necessarily have both primary rules and
other rules (which Hart would designate as secondary) that identify law (though not
necessarily sources of law) and provide for the ongoing vitality of the tradition
(though not necessarily for change).145 This suggests that the concept of a legal
system is best seen as a particular exemplification of tradition. It has been said that
traditionality is to be found in almost all legal systems146 and this is certainly true,
though the traditionality may be often lost sight of in the concentration on momentary
systems. In a larger sense, however, it would be the case that a legal system is a
tradition and can be only understood, like a film, as part of a larger story. It is a
positivist tradition that has given rise to the concept of a legal system147 and to the
idea that a sharp distinction must be drawn between law and morality, ideas that are
generally not subscribed to outside of the tradition. Legal systems would thus have a
history, and even a particular history. One cannot say the same of tradition, which
exists simply as the recorded, or remembered, story of humanity.148 It is true that there
are particular traditions, and traditions of thinking about tradition,149 yet the concept
of tradition stands beyond any of its particular manifestations. So the concepts of
tradition and system are not necessarily conflicting ones. A legal tradition may both
support a legal system and its designation of formal law and, to the extent a legal
system is defective, complement it.
The notion of tradition would also be compatible with all non-state forms of law
that exist, along with legal systems, as particular traditions. The concept of tradition,
in general, is sufficiently complex to account for their survival.150 The notion of
tradition as information is also compatible with revelation; the information here is of
a particular, sacred kind. And tradition explains the human efforts to articulate divine
and other ways of life, and human efforts to follow them. Tradition is thus an
inherently general concept. Unlike flat or autopoietic systems, moreover, which
also purport to generality, it is not tied to an underlying western epistemology, that of
145 See text accompanying note 50.
146 See Krygier, supra note 49 at 239. Krygier goes on, however, to say that [l]egal traditions
provide substance, models, exemplars and a language in which to speak within and about law (ibid.
at 244).
147 MacCormick, supra note 30 at 75. To deny this would be to repeat the error of positivism,
since [t]he claim that there is no overall or larger-scale sense to be made of the past is itself a larger-
scale claim, and it has to be earned, like any of the others (Bernard Williams, Truth & Truthfulness:
Essays in Geneology (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002) at 246). There would thus be both
a general tradition of the concept of a legal system, and particular, national instantiations of it in the
form of the traditions of individual, national legal systems. These would themselves be reflections of
larger traditions of civil and common (public) law. For the constitutions of the common law world as
taking their character largely from the context of common law principle and doctrine which provides
the context and the foundation against which a constitution is to be read and understood, see Anthony
Mason, The Common Law in Final Courts of Appeal outside Britain (2004) 78 Austl. L.J. 183 at 183.
148 For tradition as transmitted information, see text accompanying note 46.
149 As to which see Glenn, Legal Traditions, supra note 49 at 2, n. 4.
150 See supra text accompanying notes 50, 51.
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the existence of present and observable social facts. Traditions teach and are
normative (again unlike flat systems) and cannot be reduced to sociological
phenomena. They are also flexible and tolerant of great human diversity. Chthonic
life is not static, pace Hart,151 and may exist in many forms, which may be altered.
This raises the question of the nature of the relations between legal systems and legal
traditions.
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B. Relations of Conflict and Relations of Conciliation
How accommodating is a legal system to other legal systems and to other, non-
systemic forms of law or normativity? The attention of positivist theorists has been
directed almost exclusively inwards, toward the constitutive characteristics of a
system. External relations appear to have been neglected, and there has also been
neglect of notions of legal pluralism within states, transnational forms of law, and
even various forms of federalism or confederalism. Neil MacCormick has thus
referred to an extraordinarily blinkered attitude of legal philosophers toward
questions of statehood, sovereignty, and the development of the European Union.152
Yet it may not be a question of neglect or conscious disregard that explains the lack of
positivist philosophical interest in these questions. It may rather be the case that
system theory by its nature can have little or nothing to say about such questions.
Hart acknowledged that [t]he legal system of a modern state is characterized by
a certain kind of supremacy within its territory and independence of other systems …153
Kelsen spoke of the relations between norm systems as being either those of
independence or subordination.154 Joseph Raz has explained that [a]ll legal systems …
are potentially incompatible at least to a certain extent. Since all legal systems claim to be
supreme with respect to their subject-community, none can acknowledge any claims to
supremacy over the same community that may be made by another legal system.155
This would not mean, however, that legal systems are somehow definitively closed.
They may even be considered as open systems, to the extent that they themselves
contain norms that give effect to norms that do not belong to them.156 Contracts are
thus enforced, as custom may be enforced, and there are rules of private international
law for giving effect to foreign law in private international cases.
How truly open, however, are legal systems to recognition and enforcement of
non-state law, within states? To the extent that legal systems are supreme and
independent of other systems or laws, there is an inherent presumption that a system
151 Hart, supra note 16 at 91-93; on the non-static character of chthonic life, see Calvin Martin,
Epilogue: Time and the American Indian in Calvin Martin, ed., The American Indian and the
Problem of History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987) 192 at 196-97.
152 MacCormick, supra note 30 at vii.
153 Hart, supra note 16 at 24.
154 Kelsen, supra note 77 at 330, 332.
155 See Raz, Authority, supra note 48 at 119.
156 Ibid.
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should not be in the business of giving effect to laws other than its own. It would be,
in principle, undesirable and an unstable situation for a community to practise two
legal systems.157 There are thus inherent difficulties with a federation and still greater
difficulties in recognizing non-state law. In Mexico, in the Chiapas negotiations, it
was stated by the government of Mexico that the Mexican legal system was
incompatible with another legal system, and the Mexican governments position was
therefore doctrinally founded. There is, in principle, nulle place pour un pluralisme
des ordres juridiques.158 US judges would be somehow required to decide
according to US law,159 though we have seen that the judicial function is inherently
free of legal obligation.
There are of course very profound reasons for the recalcitrance of legal systems
before other potential sources of internal law. If, in an internal case, a legal system is
to jump over its own shadow and apply non-state law, there must be reasons for
doing so. There must be good reason for going beyond simple contractual freedom,
for example, and admitting that the non-written law of chthonic peoples, or the
religious law of religious minorities, should be recognized and applied in some
manner by state courts. What could these reasons be? They are reasons that suggest
that the legal system should not be applicable in certain cases. They are reasons that
go to the justification for legal systems, for their content, and for their exclusivity. Yet
we know already that the theory of legal systems purports only to describe them and
not justify them.160 There can be no reasons for adherence or non-adherence to a legal
system according to descriptive or analytical theory. Social facts do not give reasons
for their own rejection, or even adoption. So a system may be open, if it is open as a
matter of fact according to its own rules, but there are no reasons for it to take this
position. The presumption therefore prevails, in many if not most situations, that it is
not open. Systems theory thus contributes greatly to the teaching of only a single law,
since systems theory by its nature provides no means of choosing between different
laws, or even of appreciating their historical relations to one another.
How open are legal systems even in international cases? There have been
jurisdictions with no private international law and which have therefore been
characterized by radical territoriality of state law. Mexico, until the last decade, was
157 See Raz, Authority, supra note 48 at 118. See the recent reliance by a majority of the justices of
the US Supreme Court on European jurisprudence in Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U.S. 558 (2003), 123 S.
Ct. 2472; on the decision, see Donald E. Childress III, Using Comparative Constitutional Law to
Resolve Domestic Federal Questions (2003) 53 Duke L.J. 193; and for its background, see James
A.R. Nafziger, International Law and Foreign Law Right Here in River City(1998) 34 Willamette L.
Rev. 4 at 19ff.
158 van de Kerchove & Ost, supra note 34 at 37, interpreting Kelsen.
159 See Joseph Raz, Two Views of the Nature of the Theory of Law: A Partial Comparison in
Coleman, Harts Postscript, supra note 10, 1 at 34.
160 See discussion in Part I.A, above. The possibility of soft positivism would not imply an
opening of systems to use of laws drawn from outside the system, only to a notion of morality that
would clearly not extend to the total range of national laws.
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an example, with its import-substitution economy.161 Yet most states today have
some notion of private international law. As a matter of fact, they can be said to be
open systems since their own norms allow for some application of norms other than
their own. Yet each system remains supreme since private international law would be
profoundly national and subject to control of the sovereign of each state. Application
of law other than that of each state would be highly exceptional, and so it is.
Moreover, the criteria for application of foreign law are usually geographic ones, a
process of localization of events within or without supreme systems, such that the
discipline of conflicts of laws is ultimately consistent with the maintenance of
systems.
More importantly, how are the relations between state systems perceived? The
other appellation for private international law is that of conflicts of laws, and this
entire legal science and terminology developed in importance with the growth of the
state and the concept of legal systems. Why are differences in laws conceptualized as
conflicts? Because the co-existence of sharply defined, mutually exclusive, sovereign
entities will inevitably be perceived as a conflictual situation. This is even the case in
biological sciences, the origin of systemic thinking, where systems richest in
information are seen as inevitably dominant.162 Systems conflict because of their
claims to sovereignty and exclusivity. Samuel Huntington, in his best-selling Clash of
Civilizations, essentially adopted nineteenth-century legal thinking in constructing
civilizations as entities, which then would inevitably clash.163 The notion of an open
legal system is therefore a very relative and marginal one, since the main effect of the
concept of a legal system at a global or regional level is the creation of disharmony
and conflict.164 The historical importance of the law of war is the most evident
indication of this in public international law.
We are today experiencing, however, how systems thought is being surpassed or
avoided, both within and between states, in an increasingly interdependent world.
Here conflict avoidance becomes the objective and no longer conflict resolution.
Conflict avoidance involves thinking differently about laws and their relations with
one another.
161 Hctor Fix-Fierro & Sergio Lpez-Aylln, The Impact of Globalization on the Reform of the
State and the Law in Latin America (1997) 19 Hous. J. Intl L. 785 at 791 (To a closed economy
corresponded a closed legal system. Since economic exchange was limited, the room for interaction
between the domestic and the international legal systems was also limited).
162 See Ramn Margalef, Perspectives in Ecological Theory (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1968) at 16-17.
163 Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (New York:
Simon & Schuster, 1996) at 28, 41, 43: We know who we are only when we know who we are not
and often only when we know whom we are against (ibid. at 21), and: A civilization is a totality
(ibid. at 42).
164 See H. Patrick Glenn, Harmonization of Law, Foreign Law and Private International Law
(1993) 1 E.R.P.L. 47.
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Tradition conceived as information has no borders. Groups defined by adherence
to tradition may create borders for themselves, but this will be the product of
particular traditions only, such as that of legal systems. So tradition, as a general
concept, can have no underlying idea of territorial supremacy. Tradition is a general
idea, but allows itself to be particularized to everyones particular way of life.
Tradition is therefore not a hegemonic idea, though cannot itself prevent the
development of hegemonic traditions. The relations between traditions are thus in
principle relations of influence and persuasion, as opposed to conflict and dominance.
Traditions float, as with the general principles of the common and civil laws.165
They are therefore in principle accommodating both of local exception, and of other
large traditions, as has been the case for the common laws of European origin, which
now exercise persuasive influence in the world far beyond their initial colonial
expansion.166 We see this also in laws that are not conceived in terms of systems, that
expressly allow for application of different types of laws, in a general manner,167 and
that have no territorial limitations. How such accommodation is brought about will
depend on each tradition. It will frequently be done substantively, for substantive
reasons, as debate on the merits of particular positions goes on. It may be done quasi-
substantively, as with the notion of reasonable accommodation of non-state norms
within states.168 It may be done formally and geographically, as with the tradition of
legal systems and their private international law, but we are seeing how this means of
thinking about law is itself being questioned. Its role is a matter of ongoing influence.
Teaching the merits of different laws, in a dialogical process in the same classroom,
must therefore be based on their traditional and normative character. The process is
not one of description, but rather of engagement.
Conclusion
Western lawyers, if they are able to overcome their tradition of hostility toward
the idea of tradition, are nevertheless likely to view tradition as an imprecise and non-
binding concept. This view is a product of much of the information available within
western legal systems, which would teach that systems are precise, stabilizing, and
binding. Tradition would be none of these things. In one sense this is true, since
tradition as a general concept is simply information. This is its main advantage,
however, since it allows us to conceptualize all of the laws of the world and to better
understand their nature and their methods, in a non-conflictual manner. In another
sense, however, the traditional western position is very misleading, if not downright
165 John Bell, Sources of Law, in Birks, supra note 34 at 1213; Preliminary Provision, Civil Code
of Quebec (Civil Code to govern in harmony with … the general principles of law).
166 See H. Patrick Glenn, On Common Laws (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005).
167 Thus the notion that the law of the land is law (dina de-malkhuta dina) in talmudic law, and the
place for local legislation (kanun jurisdiction) in islamic law, and the accommodation of state law,
however reluctantly, within chthonic tradition.
168 See Jos Woehrling, Lobligation de laccommodement raisonnable et ladaptation de la socit
la diversit religieuse (1998) 43 McGill L.J. 325.
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mistaken. Tradition exists not only as a general concept, but in many particular
manifestations. Particular traditions may be very precise, very stabilizing, and some
may even purport to be binding. The idea of a legal system provides an example of
such a particular tradition. Yet on closer examination we find that legal systems do
not create any obligation to obey the law. They do not bind. This is because they
exercise only persuasive authority, as do all traditions. We can therefore eventually
come to see western legal systems as substantive arguments, which are in constant
and closer dialogical relations with the other legal traditions of the world. There is
much to be said, and much has been said, in favour of legal systems. If they decline in
influence, however, it does not mean they will be followed by a normative void, or
anarchy. They have existed as traditions and the general concept of tradition has
supported them. Where they lose authority, this may be replaced by the idea of
tradition itself, and by many of the particular substantive legal traditions that legal
systems have adopted. Both the general concept of tradition, and particular traditions,
will continue. Transsystemic teaching therefore does not take place in a normative
void, in a no-place where there is not (even) the social fact of a legal system. It
rather takes place where the normative action is, in the large debate on the nature of
justice and its content, and on the manner of reconciliation of different concepts of
justice in the world. Doin the transsystemic is the most justifiable form of legal
education in the present state of the world.
