Brian Z. Tamanaha

A more nuanced justification for his early pronouncement that law was a state-level institution. Here, he is now prepared to admit that "state" can be read a bit more expansively (nations, states, municipalities, etc.) but his broader point remains unchanged: what he calls "abstract" pluralism (like that by Pospisil), that will find law anywhere that satisfies the definition, gets it wrong by trying to define law at all. Law is wherever people see something as law, which ironically is almost the same thing, but he is confident that due to linguistic conventions most people will not call "law" things like the norms governing universities, religions, or even criminal gangs.

The retrospective overview of the history of ideas on legal pluralism is fair and even-handed. He just trips over himself at the end trying to rationalize his jaundiced view that results in the conclusion that most of the world's societies lacked law, and thereby deserved the treatment they received at the hands of more enlightened Western societies who brought the gift of law to these benighted heathens. Yuk.… (mais)

Certainly provocative. One can grant Tamanaha his primary thesis that the culture of legal education, as well as its costs, no longer aligns well with the realities of its practice for most graduates, without endorsing his elitist conclusions that law schools and their students should be "tracked," with the upper echelon enjoying a deep, scholarly approach to the discipline, while the plebes limit themselves to learning how to represent DUI defendants. In effect, he envisions a similar divided in law as exists between doctors and nurse practitioners. The reality is that there are simply too many law schools, and new ones opening all the time. Limit the source, but those that remain should expect equal education and training that warrants all attorneys being members of a professional class, and none a mere a technician of the judiciary.… (mais)