The concept of legal families maintained the law of other peoples in the western view at a time of legal scientism and legal nationalism, in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It did so by accepting the idea of national legal systems and the possibility of a taxonomic description of them. As communication between the peoples of the world accelerated in the late twentieth century it became more and more evident that national legal systems could no longer be treated as autonomous and sovereign, as both new and ancient forms of non-state law asserted themselves. The notion of legal traditions allows a conceptual understanding of the relations of laws conceived as normative information. There can thus be multiple laws applicable in a given territory, with varying degrees of influence, since the concept of legal tradition is one which accommodates multiple sources of law and gradations in the force of their normativity.
Most of the legal theory of the last four centuries, in the Western world, has been state-centred. It has justified the existence of states, facilitated their expansion, conceptualized their sources and structures, sought to resolve their conflicts, and developed their law. The state has even been taken, in much of this writing, as the exclusive source of law. There are indications, however, that this theoretical preoccupation with state structures, state institutions, and state laws may now be in decline. This would be a significant development, a historical shift in emphasis in the conceptualization of Western law. It would not, however, mean the end of states or of state law, but rather their contextualization. States and state law would exist in a larger field of normativity. This would entail recognition of a wider range of sources of law and a wider range of relations between laws and between peoples. To attempt to understand these processes, and the extent of their progression, this article examines what we know, or think we know, of the relations between law and the state, before turning to current efforts to develop a transnational concept of law.
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