Customary law

Customary law has often been used in juxtaposition against state or national law, as representing a form of “local,” “indigenous,” “informal,” or “traditional” law that is different from state law. This perception is based on a historical, Western paradigm of law associated with lawyers' views of law. These endorse classic legal pluralism, based on dual systems of law theory, where the state or national law defines what counts as customary law in terms of its own narrowly defined sources and institutions. This form of pluralism has been challenged by anthropologists and social scientists, who have highlighted other, alternative forms of legal ordering through a rich and diverse ethnography based on empirical research. Under this new, social–scientific pluralism that acknowledges the transnational dimensions of law, customary law has come to represent a regulatory power that exists both within and beyond states but that need not be tied to states' territorial jurisdiction.