Abstract
Legal pluralism is not a new phenomenon, in this context it is referred to medieval particularism, Ehrlich's analysis of living law in Bukovina at the beginning of the 20th century and finally, from the last decades, there are a number of works describing plurality of legal systems with independent sources of normativity, or even law which is independent of states or international community. Despite the alleged similarities, the historical and contemporary conceptions of legal pluralism differ in many ways.
Legal pluralism is currently described by many authors as a source of uncertainty for addressees of law, plurality of sources and thus also fragmentation of law, or weakening the authority of national law. In this contribution, I will try to argue that, despite some exceptions, overall structural changes in contemporary law tend to lead to normative openness and interconnection of legal systems, international law or autonomous norm-making does not result in the demise of states or their dramatic weakening.
In the longer term, institutional pluralism is more likely to lead to dialogue than to open conflict. Legal pluralism may, paradoxically, also act as a means of stability, for example by confronting the changing law of states facing new challenges with the more traditional concepts of liberal democracies arising from the post-war order.
The paper therefore challenges the view criticizing legal pluralism as a nihilistic concept that upsets the traditional perception of law and emphasizes, on the contrary, the integration potential of a pluralistic concept of law.