Legalising inter-legality

This is a review of the edited collection of Jan Klabbers and Gianluigi Palombella, 'The Challenge of Inter-Legality' (Cambridge, 2019). It considers how the volume revisits the influential concept of 'inter-legally', introduced by the Portuguese sociologist Boaventura de Sousa Santos 35 years ago. The main focus of the review is an evaluation of the editors' innovative and extended attempt, supported by many of the contributions, to account for inter-legality not simply as a sociological phenomenon - an effect of the interpenetration of legal orders - but as an idea with its own specifically legal content. In so doing, the editors provide a new normative dimension to our understanding of contemporary legal pluralism on the global stage. It is important, however, to continue to recognise the limitations of any single juridical idea in contributing to our understanding of global (in)justice.