Retrospective on the first funding phase (June 2021 – May 2025)

• Research Agenda

  The Käte Hamburger Kolleg ‘Legal Unity and Pluralism’ examines phenomena of unresolved simultaneity of legal unity and pluralism from a genuinely historical perspective. Our hypothesis is that legal pluralism should not be regarded as a sign of deficient law or a dysfunctional legal praxis (of earlier historical periods) but as a structural characteristic of law per se. The corresponding tendency to standardize and unify law in all cultures throughout history may seem paradoxical at first sight and this tension-laden dynamic between unity and pluralism requires new scholarly assessment. The project opens up unusual perspectives on the understanding of law and society in general and the (legal) ways of dealing with forms of cultural diversity in particular.

  There is currently no model that permits an adequate assessment of legal unity and pluralism in its cultural polymorphy. The goal of the Kolleg is to develop and to test a historically informed descriptive and analytical model in a cooperation between the Fellows and the Münster scholars.

  In this manner, we will assess the interrelations of legal unity and pluralism afresh and offer a new analytical approach to diverse phenomena of coexistence for discussion.

• Research Perspectives

  The research of the Kolleg is organised in three research perspectives in order to structure the complex relationship of legal unity and pluralism thematically and to establish a common basis from which comparisons can be drawn.

  Beginning with legal norms, the Kolleg’s research examines Phenomena of Plural Legal Orders. Secondly, we focus on forms of plurality and unity in Legal and Judicial Practice. Thirdly, we analyse the relationship between Societal Diversity and Legal Plurality on the basis of the social context of legal arrangements.

  While we consider these perspectival approaches to be discrete fields in their own right, we also discuss their mutual interconnections and interdependencies.

• Annual Themes

  In order to better integrate the Kolleg’s three research perspectives, we will focus the Kolleg’s work on four annual themes during the first funding phase.

  During the academic year 2021/22, the theme is “Exception and Plurality”. We will discuss and test against the evidence the methodological question whether the relationship between unity and plurality demarcates the same (or a similar) boundary as the relationship between exception and rule.

  2022/23: under the theme “Modes of Standardization”, we will examine historical and modern examples of standardisation that sought to overcome the fragmentation of normative orders in different social constellations.

  2023/24 we will take the opposite perspective under the theme “Causes of Plurality” and ask why standardisation frequently fails or reaches its limits and what causes for the fragmentary nature of law in spatial, personal or temporal terms can be discerned.

  2024/25 we will concentrate especially on extra-legal factors in the creation and alteration of the law under the theme “Dynamism and Stability”. The focus will be on homogeneity and diversity in social life, mobility, religious unity or plurality as well as other dynamics. From this vantage, our approach, which is based in history and legal history, invites dialogue with neighbouring disciplines.

  Apart from the annual themes, there will always be space for unusual perspectives and new impulses and we consequently also welcome projects that fall outside this framework.