{"id":1712,"date":"2006-06-01T09:02:14","date_gmt":"2006-06-01T13:02:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.journals.law.harvard.edu\/ilj\/site\/?p=1712"},"modified":"2011-03-09T11:55:29","modified_gmt":"2011-03-09T15:55:29","slug":"issue_47-2_legrand","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/ilj\/2006\/06\/issue_47-2_legrand\/","title":{"rendered":"On the Singularity of Law"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Excerpt from the Speech:<\/strong><\/span>*<\/p>\n

\n

“We must attempt to hear only what is said there.”
\n– Heidegger<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n

Thus, situating myself within a cosmopolitan polycentricity, I discern two salient interpretive strategies purporting to ascribe meaning to what is apprehended as \u201claw\u201d\u2014neither of them ever appearing in pure guise, both of them always formulated as narrative predilections <\/em>(or valorizations).<\/p>\n

* * *<\/p>\n

The first approach discounts the singularity of law. Underlying this management-driven, productivity-oriented response to law-texts is the decision to instrumentalize law\u2014that is, to press law into service in support of an agenda diversely introduced as \u201charmonization,\u201d \u201cintegration,\u201d \u201cuniformization,\u201d \u201cunification,\u201d or \u201cglobalization.\u201d This program of rationalization\u2019s principal discursive configurations are law-as-meta-law and meta-law-as-law. The initial variation on the theme of trans-legality concerns the move from localism to transcendentalism. Assumptions informing the prescriptive case for law-as-meta-law include the idea that law\u2019s facticity must be regarded as the largely obsolete remnant of an early-modern worldview mired in diverse brands of stultifying nationalism; the related idea that as long as law\u2019s particularism continues to abide, not enough has been done to move beyond the post-feudal shackles of melancholic parochialism; and the further idea that meta-law is worthy of high estimation as a progressive political, economic, or social weapon. For the partisans of law-as-meta-law, the responsible thing to do in the face of obstinate traces of stupefied localism is to surpass them, that is, to foster an emancipatory project of liberation from prejudice that moves beyond\/beneath any culturality\/traditionality of law. Unsurprisingly, advocates of this position, possibly taking the view that law-texts are striving for self-realization through assimilation into a totality and for reconciliation inter se<\/em> within the totality, find law inherently repeatable and indeed incessantly repeated. Almost inevitably envisaging law as consisting of basic units somehow unconnected in any meaningful way to any local network of intelligibility, which they proceed to make isomorphically homogeneous across borders, the partisans of law-as-meta-law readily refer to the transportability of law and, indeed, to the obviousness of the transportability of law.<\/p>\n

The other main variation on the theme of transcendentalization involves meta-law-as-law\u2014that is, supranational regulatory or conflict-resolution regimes operating, often outside the realm of governmental law-making or international treaties and within self-established procedural frameworks, as issuers and enforcers of sometimes highly specialized rules. Whether one has in mind the Apparel Industry Partnership, the WTO Appellate Panel, the International Federation of Consulting Engineers Model Contract, the lex mercatoria, the Agreement on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (\u201cTRIPS\u201d), or the World Heritage Convention, \u201cglobal\u201d rules of governance are understood as functioning in a standard manner showing no meaningful deviation from one locus to the next\u2014that is, as being implemented \u201cirrespective of the legal traditions and the economic and political conditions of the countries in which they are to be applied.\u201d Again, law is found to be inherently repeatable and indeed incessantly repeated. Even within the European Community, where the Treaty of Rome\u2019s preoccupation is with the harmonization of laws (i.e., not with uniformity, equivalence, or convergence) and where all directives concede a national margin of appreciation to Member States, designations like \u201cEuropean Contract Law,\u201d \u201cEuropean Tort Law,\u201d \u201cEuropean Private Law,\u201d \u201cEuropean Administrative Law,\u201d \u201cEuropean Public Law\u201d (dereferentialized labels all), to confine myself to the smallest number of illustrations culled from the plethoric references to \u201cone law,\u201d point to the view that \u201c[u]niformity, in an ideal [European Community] would be both substantive and procedural. Not only would black-letter law be the same in all Member States, as if diligently copied or faithfully translated from a single private law code, but judicial remedies would reflect an identical sense of procedural justice as well.\u201d<\/p>\n

* This excerpt does not include citations. To read the entire article, including supporting notes, please download the PDF.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Thus, situating myself within a cosmopolitan polycentricity, I discern two salient interpretive strategies purporting to ascribe meaning to what is apprehended as \u201claw\u201d\u2014neither of them ever appearing in pure guise, both of them always formulated as narrative predilections (or valorizations).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"_FSMCFIC_featured_image_caption":"","_FSMCFIC_featured_image_nocaption":"","_FSMCFIC_featured_image_hide":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[123],"tags":[45],"class_list":["post-1712","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-print-archives","tag-criminal-law"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/peZu3S-rC","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/ilj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1712","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/ilj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/ilj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/ilj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/ilj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1712"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/ilj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1712\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/ilj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1712"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/ilj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1712"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/ilj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1712"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}