Legal pluralism is a contemporary image of law that has been advanced by sociolegal scholars in response to the dominant monist image of law as derivative of the political state and its progeny. The pluralistic image redirects law and society research toward the myriad normative orders outside the circle of “the Law.” This essay considers the epistemological foundations of both legal pluralism and the legal monist image of law against which its proponents are reacting. It argues that contemporary pluralistic imaginations rest on the same impoverished view of law and its subjects that sustains the traditional claim that law comprises only the processes and institutions emanating from the modern political state. The authors propose an alternative image of law in an effort to redirect the sociolegal studies research agenda.Challenging the traditional social-scientific legal pluralism of reified cultures and communities, the idea of critical legal pluralism presented in this essay rests on the insight that it is knowledge that maintains and creates realities: a critical legal pluralism imagines legal subjects as “law inventing” and not merely “law abiding.” The authors argue that, once the constructive, creative capacities of legal subjects are recognized alongside the plurality of these same subjects, the relationship between laws and selves reveals its complexity. They acknowledge that their approach is only one of many possible critical legal pluralist approaches; but they maintain that any reconception of law within a framework of critical legal pluralism is a form of emancipatory prescription. As definitions of law are revised and rejected, new vistas are opened for sociolegal scholarship.

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Contemporary shifts in legal pluralism theory (from weak, intra-state pluralism to strong, extra-state pluralism and from socio-scientific to critical legal pluralism) have raised important new questions about law as a normative phenomenon. This article argues for the significance of implicit and inferential legal norms. It begins by considering a movement of thought—evangelicalism—that subordinates the implicit and informal to the explicit and authorized. The essay then outlines the principal features of a non-chirographic legal pluralism and explores how regimes of written rules are consistently made over by those whose conduct they are presumptively meant to govern.

This article offers a critical analysis of expert Law Reform Commissions in Canada. The author traces the history of the idea of institutional law reform from its intellectual roots early in the twentieth century through its apotheosis in the 1960s and 1970s to its modern decline, which the author attributes to shifting cultural tendencies creating scepticism as to the value of law reform. The author argues for a reconceptualization of expert Law Reform Commissions, and his analysis proceeds in three stages. First, the author examines the concepts of law which are promoted by law reform and concludes that the widespread belief that explicit, official law (state legislation) is the superior juridical form is in fact erroneous. The author argues that formal legislation is not the only form of law, but in fact everyday practices (including non-linguistic ones) also constitute part of legal normativity. Next, the author contends that law reform is not the exclusive domain of the law reform commissioner, but in fact is carried out by judges, lawyers and all citizens every day simply by the performance of their daily activities. Finally, the author argues that in order to maintain their utility Law Reform Commissions must be willing to reimagine themselves. They must be willing to reduce staff and work with external personnel, they must reject narrow instrumentalist processes and focus on issues of broader relevance, and they must conceive of research projects not directly related to doctrinal categories of law and which are intended to create a product digestible by the entire population. The author concludes by arguing that, while there is a future for expert Law Reform Commissions in Canada, they must be willing to recommission themselves with a new focus.