Legal pluralism across the global South: colonial origins and contemporary consequences

Abstract This essay conveys past and present legally plural situations across the Global South, highlighting critical issues. It provide readers a deep sense of legal pluralism and an appreciation of its complexity and the consequences that follow. A brief overview of colonization sets the stage, followed by an extended discussion of colonial indirect rule, which formed the basis for political and legal pluralism. Thereafter, I discuss in order, the transformation-invention of customary law, socially embedded village courts, the enhancement of the power of traditional elites, uncertainty and conflict over land, clashes between customary and religious law and women’s right and human rights, the recent turn to non-state law by development agencies, and the entrenched structure of legal pluralism. Notwithstanding innumerable variations and changes across locations and over time, the essay shows that legal pluralism across the Global South constitutes a distinct, enduring social-historical formation with shared structural features that must be understood on its own terms. The essay is written for scholars, government officials, international development agencies, and law and development theorists and practitioners interested in law in postcolonial societies.