Toward a Postmodern Theory of Law

Abstract

Law at the end of the twentieth century is a practice based on legal-philosophical concepts such as the representational theory of truth, neutrality, universality, and legitimacy. The content of such concepts responds to the tradition of the western cultural paradigm. We share the experience of fragmentation in this cultural unanimity: we live in a world of heterogeneousness and multiplicity that upholds the claims of different concepts of the world and of life shared by dwellers in microspaces. The theory of law should be adapted to take this experience into account. We propose a change in direction oriented toward the creation of operational legal concepts: creative justice, perspectivist rationality, a systemic theory of truth and a judicial process that guarantees the multicultural experience. Postmodernity affirms the urgent need for a new form of legal reasoning.