One law to bind them?

The sun's shining through the windows into a cool, stylish room with quality art on the walls: this is how education should be, not conducted sullenly in pseudo-office blocks. I'm in the plenary session: Francisco Colom, a political scientist is explaining the concept of legal pluralism - it starts drily and rapidly becomes a fascinating demonstration of practical philosophy. In short, it's the notion that we can be subject to multiple legal systems at once. The examples that come to my mind are the arguments put forward in Ireland that Canon Law allows a cleric to not report child abuse to the secular authorities: a happier example is the UK's practice of allowing Jewish and Islamic courts (the latter exercised the rightwing press though the Jewish courts have been operating for centuries) to rule on a range of issues with the consent of all parties (and yes, non-believers can and do use them for their speed and economy).

The philosophical questions are about the role of the state in the administration of justice and the protection of the individual's autonomy. Political questions - particularly relating to Canada but relevant to most states - revolve around respecting minority traditions, particularly in religious and colonial situations: Malaysia operates civil law for some and religious law for Muslims. Rwanda has incorporated village tribunals as part of the genocide reconciliation system, and the United Kingdom abolished Wales's progressive constitution (Cyfraith Hywel Dda - the laws of Hywel the Good) while allowing Scotland to maintain a separate legal system when union was effected.

But in ethnic rather than national situations, it's difficult to permit a separate legal code to apply to a racial or religious group: what about the dissenting individual within that group, particularly women in religious groups)? What about social cohesion and the notion of the citizen? Is the legitimacy of the state as disinterested arbiter weakened by its delegation of justice under certain conditions? These are cultural and philosophical questions more than they are legal ones: they expose the fault-lines in the easy assumptions about law and fundamental rights which so often appear in public debates.

As it's Easter, how about a Christian case study: according to the Gospels, Pilate (a Roman governor of Jerusalem) declaimed jurisdiction when the Jewish priesthood accused Jesus of heresy, then said he couldn't see that any Roman laws had been breached, before bowing before the court of public opinion and pronouncing the sentence of crucifixion, though reluctantly and sarcastically - it's a political decision rather than a legal one. He was a legal pluralist (luckily for Christianity and children, or there'd have been a large theological whole and long school terms).