ABSTRACT
Private international law responds to the plurality of existing normative orders, and at the same time, as domestic law, it partakes in that plurality. As a consequence, private international law does not overcome legal plurality, nor does it provide a metanormativity shared between the regimes; it merely adds a second level to the plurality of substantive laws and conflicts regimes. This makes a legal ontology necessary that avoids oneness and embraces plurality. The chapter suggests pluriversality as such an ontology. Drawing on different theories – Carl Schmitt, William James, and decolonial theory – such an ontology is developed and analyzed. Private international law is not an add-on in such an ontology; instead it is a constitutive element.
Michaels, Ralf, Private International Law and the Legal Pluriverse in Philosophical Foundations of Private International Law (Roxana Banu, Michael Green and Ralf Michaels eds), forthcoming 2023; Max Planck Private Law Research Paper No 23/10.
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