Reframing the Universalist Republic

Abstract

France’s official republican doctrines preclude public recognition of legal pluralism, whether in the guise of legislative plurality or customary and religious legal orders. This unusually emphatic rejection of legal pluralism stems from an ideology of abstract universalism that translates primarily as a formalistic understanding of equality before the law and thus as a rejection of all identity-based classifications. Equality, in this sense, requires citizens to be subject to identical laws under a single legislative jurisdiction. Yet notwithstanding the republican orthodoxy, French constitutional doctrine has been adapted in recent decades to accommodate various forms of legislative and even jurisdictional pluralism in peripheral regions, particularly in the outre-mer (overseas territories) but also in some parts of the metropolitan territory. In turn, I will argue that the abandonment of strict legislative uniformity can be traced to a wider crisis of French universalism and its conception of rights.