Previous efforts at legal development have focused almost exclusively on state legal systems, many of which have shown little improvement over time. Recently, organizations engaged in legal development activities have begun to pay greater attention to the implications of local, informal, indigenous, religious, and village courts or tribunals, which often are more efficacious than state legal institutions, especially in rural communities. Legal pluralism is the term applied to these situations because these institutions exist alongside official state legal systems, usually in a complex or uncertain relationship. Although academics, especially legal anthropologists and sociologists, have discussed legal pluralism for decades, their work has not been consulted in the development context. Similarly, academics have failed to benefit from the insights of development practitioners. This book brings together, in a single volume, contributions from academics and practitioners to explore the implications of legal pluralism for legal development. All of the practitioners have extensive experience in development projects, the academics come from a variety of backgrounds, and most have written extensively on legal pluralism and on development.

People's Law and State Law: The Bellagio Papers.

Jon Unruh examines the role of a disordered and dysfunctional legal pluralism in Liberia's descent into internal armed conflict. Thoko Khaime considers the concepts of children's universal rights and their relationship to the social reality of living law in an African society. Abdulmumuni Oba discusses the jurisdiction and functioning of Area Courts in the state of Ilorin in the Federal Republic of Nigeria. Sue Farran examines the land law in the Pacific state of Vanuatu.

"Abstract Global legal pluralism has become one of the leading analytical frameworks for understanding and conceptualizing law in the twenty-first century"--

Papua New Guinea’s two most powerful legal orders — customary law and state law —undermine one another in criminal matters. This phenomenon, called legal dissonance, partly explains the low level of personal security found in many parts of the country. This book demonstrates that a lack of coordination in the punishing of wrong behavior is both problematic for legal orders themselves and for those who are subject to such legal phenomena Legal dissonance can lead to behavior being simultaneously promoted by one legal order and punished by the other, leading to injustice, and, perhaps more importantly, undermining the ability of both legal orders to deter wrongdoing.