The Future of Legal Theory

This paper is part of a larger inquiry into “The Future of Law,” conducted by the Hague Institute for the Internationalisation of Law. The present paper addresses the prospects of development in the area of legal theory. It argues for a fundamental transformation of legal theory in the context of an increasingly interdisciplinary investigation into conceptualising legal argument and law’s role in regulating modern societies, inside and outside known parameters such as the state, normative hierarchy or ‘unity of law’. Instead, we must ask how and whether law at all can (or, should) reassert its place in a multi-vocal assessment of social order.