Inside or Out: Two Types of International Legal Pluralism

In this article I explore the distinction and relationship between two types of international legal pluralism. Internal pluralism construes a pluralism that is internal to the international legal order. External pluralism contests any hierarchical claim of international law and thus is external to the international order.

The central argument of the article is that the two types of pluralism, in a somewhat paradoxical way, depend on each other. While the international legal order needs its hierarchical claim to supremacy in order to provide the stability and legal certainty to serve the essential interests of states, communities, and individuals, the legitimacy of its claim to supremacy relies on the inspiration, diversity and politics that are articulated in the paradigm of external pluralism. In turn, the paradigm of external pluralism seems difficult to reconcile with the interests of stability of the international legal system, and yet it relies at least in part on that system since its primarily political project cannot provide stability at the international level.