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Volume 16 | Issue 2
Article 5
5-8-2013
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Heidi Libesman
The project of Toward a New Legal Common Sense is to outline the
structure of a new, more just social paradigm and to explore the
possibilities for achieving it. Santos starts from the premise that the
prevailing paradigm, which he calls "modernity," is in crisis.' Although
modernity is built upon worthy aspirations such as peace, justice, and
equality, Santos believes that there is a growing gap between these
aspirations and reality, a gap which the prevailing paradigm is incapable
of bridging.2 As a result of the crisis in modernity, we have entered a
period of paradigmatic transition in which two fundamentally
incompatible models-capitalism and democracy-vie for supremacy.
Although Santos identifies capitalism as the hegemonic model, he argues
that the struggle to determine the character of the postmodern paradigm
has not yet been played out. Toward a New Legal Common Sense
articulates and defends a counter-hegemonic model sounding in
democracy.
Santos's primary audience consists of progressive social movements,
transnational non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and intellectuals
who are involved with these groups, and Santos's arguments will likely
resonate most with them. However, Santos's book is not a work of
polemical advocacy, but rather an effort to rethink at a conceptual and
ethical level the normative framework and cultural assumptions
t The first edition was published under a slightly different title: TOWARDS A NEW COMMON
SENSE: LAW, SCIENCE AND POLITICS IN THE PARADIGMATIC TRANSITION (1995).
*
LL.M. (Harvard), D.Jur. Candidate (Osgoode Hall Law School, Toronto, Canada). I would like
to express my sincere thanks to Ian B. Lee for his many helpful suggestions and comments throughout
the process of writing this review, and to Terri Libesman, David Goldman, and Brian Slattery for
BOAVENTURA
DE
SOUSA
SANTOS,
TOWARD
NEW
LEGAL COMMON
SENSE:
LAW,
2.
Id. at xv; see also id. at xvii ("[The] assumption of this book's argument is that the dominant
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Libesman
2004]
8. Id. at 248.
9. Id.at8.
10. Id.at342.
11.
14.
Id. at 237-257 (discussing the encounter of indigenous peoples with modem state law).
15. In making this distinction I have in mind Robert Cover's distinction between law as an order
of meaning and the social organization of law as power. See COVER, supra note 11. Reading Santos in
light of Cover helps to illuminate the difference Santos is aiming to express in his distinction between
"order" and "good order" and "society" and "good society." See SANTOS, supra note 1, at 2-3.
16. SANTOS,supra note 1, at xix, 10.
17. Id.
at2-3.
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Libesman
Libesman: Between
Modernity and Postmodernity
CONCEPTUALIZING POSTMODERNITY
Id. at 10.
Id. atxvi, 2, 12, 172-77.
Id. at 35.
Id. at xvii.
Id. at 14, 18-19.
Id.
at 13.
Id. at xviii, 14.
Id., at 3,7,9,10,15,21, 25.
Id. at233, 234, 254-311, 342.
Journal
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of traditions and perspectives that have been forgotten or unjustly
marginalized. In Santos's work, these traditions and perspectives are
predominantly European,27 although he also argues for the need to engage
traditions from other civilizations.2" His approach is inspired by Foucault's
critical genealogical studies, by legal anthropological literature,2 9 and by
subaltern historiography.3" Santos's search also involves the use of an
interpretive approach called "diatopical hermeneutics,"' which I discuss
below.
B. Legal Pluralism and Hermeneutics
Santos makes one of his most interesting and significant contributions to
the development of a postmodern paradigm for law when he advocates
expanding the hermeneutic possibilities of law beyond the boundaries of
the state. That is, he combines his critique of positivist (i.e., statist)
theories of law with a reconstructive theory of legal pluralism.32
The first step toward the "emancipation" of law, Santos argues, requires
"the relative uncoupling of law and the state." By this he wishes to
recognize that "the nation-state, far from being the exclusive or the natural
time-space of law, is only one among others."33 Santos's argument is that
an exclusive focus on the state and on hegemonic liberal hermeneutics
serves to marginalize a vast array of sources and normative structures
anchored in non-state entities. These sources and structures give meaning
to diverse ways of being; they frame human expectations, judgments, and
reactions and they thereby play a role in the complex process of
identification and interpretation of principles of law in the adjudication,
mediation, resolution, and containment of human conflict. Santos is
concerned to highlight and bring into the purview of constitutional theory
the variety of these sources, long overlooked because they are not part of
the state. If law is to contribute to the resolution of human conflicts in
pluralistic societies, he argues, it must be interpreted in such a way that
includes the interpretations of persons and communities who have been
unjustly excluded or marginalized in the past.
Two aspects of Santos's theory of legal pluralism are especially worth
mentioning here. First, an important part of Santos's theory of legal
pluralism is an argument for a multicultural reformation of human rights.34
In order to mediate the opposition between universalism and relativism
27.
Id.at 84.
Id. at 85,
34.
Id. at 280-89.
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Libesman
Libesman: Between
Modernity and Postmodernity
(1995).
Abdallahi An-na-ia, Toward a Cross-CulturalApproach to DefiningInternationalStandards
37.
of Human Rights: The Meaning of Cruel, Inhuman or DegradingTreatment or Punishment, in HUMAN
RIGHTS IN CROSS-CULTURAL PERSPECTIVES: A QUEST FOR CONSENSUS 19 (Abdallahi An-na-im ed.,
1992).
38.
39. SANTOS, supra note 1, at 17, 89 (emphasizing that "rejection of cultural relativism" is one of
the most important distinguishing features of his reading of the postmodem project).
at xvi.
40. Id.
41. Id. at 177-182.
420
Id. at 458.
Id. at 280-81; see also id. at 282-86, 474.
44.
45.
See id. at 182-86, 280-86, 458-59 (discussing the social basis of global agency).
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Libesman
Libesman: Between
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Id. at 243.
49.
MULTICULTURAL
Id. at 243.
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Modernity and Postmodernity
50. See, e.g.,MICHEL ALBERT, CAPITALISM VS. CAPITALISM: How AMERICA'S OBSESSION WITH
INDIVIDUAL ACHIEVEMENT AND SHORT-TERM PROFIT HAS LED IT TO THE BRINK OF COLLAPSE (Paul
Haviland, trans., 1993) (1991); IRENE LYNCH FALLON, WORKING WITHIN TWO KINDS OF CAPITALISM
(2002), ANDREW FRASER, REINVENTING ARISTOCRACY: TOWARD A CONSTITUTIONAL REFORMATION
OF CORPORATE GOVERNANCE (1998); Ian B. Lee, Is There a Cure for Corporate "Psychopathy"?,
AM. BUS. L. J. (forthcoming 2005).
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