LOLA: Levels of Legal Pluralism in Abya Yala. Decolonizing Constitutional Narratives in the New Latin American Constitutionalism

Referent for the department: Giorgia Pavani

Contemporary legal systems are faced with the challenges brought about by increasing cultural,

ethnic, and religious diversity. These entail an urgent need to establish mechanisms for the inclusion

and protection of diversity. In this context, legal anthropologists have developed the concept of

legal pluralism1 to represent this coexistence of rules, sanctions and justice bodies, operating in the

same public sphere. Starting from this theoretical framework, this project aims to explore the role

of legal pluralism as a potential lingua franca for countries in the Global South, and as a powerfully

decolonizing constitutional narrative.

The theoretical benchmark for this analysis is the concept of pluralismo jurídico formal de tipo

igualitario (formal egalitarian legal pluralism), as developed by the legal anthropologist André

Hoekema: a legal approach that advocates the coexistence of multiple formal legal systems within

a society, ensuring their equality, to prevent discrimination and to promote the equal recognition

of indigenous systems within the constitutional discourse. This pluralism can take two different

forms according to Hoekema: unitary and egalitarian

Members of the Department

Silvia Bagni
Sabrina Ragone

Other members