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How Jean-Guy Belley Thinks: A Translator's Note
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 January 2013
Extract
Why has Quebec proved such a fertile ground for the study of legal pluralism over the last generation? It is not that formalism in law is any less tenacious in Quebec than elsewhere, or that the state-made law is held in lower esteem. If anything, the fabled cult of enactment that characterizes modern civilian methodology has been exacerbated in the run-up to the adoption of the Civil Code of Québec and the twenty years since that moment. The mixed nature of Quebec legal sources, given that mixité is seen as much as a historical fact as the basis for a way of knowing law, cannot explain the wealth of scholarly attention devoted to diversity in law. Whether Quebec's brand of pluralism for law comes from factors such as linguistic and cultural diversity, an ongoing contact with Aboriginal law, or a special experience with religious law is a matter of ongoing speculation. But in the final analysis, it is not unfair to think that legal pluralism has flourished in Quebec because of the work of a handful of imaginative scholars who have invested their talent in this intellectual project.
Professor Jean-Guy Belley is plainly one of their number. His work as a theorist of legal pluralism is celebrated in Quebec and well read in France. Yet his prodigious scholarly output is less well known elsewhere in Canada, where that work would likely be understood to have special relevance. Indeed, over the past ten or so years, Professor Belley has placed increasing emphasis on Anglo-American legal scholarship and common-law sources in his teaching and thinking about law. The translation of the foregoing essay has therefore been prepared at once as a respectful homage to a friend and colleague and in the hope that, in a modest way, it might encourage a wider readership for his important work.
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Canadian Journal of Law and Society / La Revue Canadienne Droit et Société , Volume 26 , Issue 2 , August 2011 , pp. 253 - 255
- Copyright
- Copyright © Canadian Law and Society Association 2011
References
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3 See, e.g., Coutu, Michel, “Juridicité et normativité dans la théorie sociojuridique de R.A. Macdonald,” Revue générate de droit 28 (1997), 337CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
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6 “Quelle culture juridique pour le 21e siècle?” Canadian Bar Review 80 (2001), 1Google Scholar. The paper appeared in the proceedings of a colloquium held to mark the 125th anniversary of the Supreme Court of Canada.
7 See Belley, Jean-Guy, “Le rayonnement intellectuel de Jean Carbonnier au Québec: le succès d'estime d'un honnête homme,” McGill Law Journal 54 (2009), 407CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Belley's, thesis, Conflit social et pluralisme juridique en sociologie du droit (Université de Paris II, 1977)Google Scholar, appeared at roughly the same time that Carbonnier published Sociologie juridique(Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1978)Google Scholar. Carbonnier refers to the thesis as a welcome break from the practice in legal pluralism whereby “la doctrine d'expression française et d'expression anglaise … se sont développées dans une ignorance réciproque” (363).
8 See, e.g., Belley, Jean-Guy, “La pensée positiviste et ses tourments,” in Transformation de la culture juridique québécoise,ed. Melkevik, Bjarne et al. (Quebec, QC: Presses de l'Université Laval, 1998), 237Google Scholar; “L'avenir du droit et des juristes: trois scénarios,” Revue générate de droit 30 (2000), 501Google Scholar.
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11 Belley, Jean-Guy, “Le programme d'enseignement trans-systémique du droit à l'Universite McGill,” Jurisprudence—Revue critique 1 (2010), 93Google Scholar.
12 As is plain in the portions of a special issue of the McGill Law Journal pointing to the foundations of this teaching experiment in legal pluralism, notably Janda, Richard, “Toward Cosmopolitan Law,” McGill Law Journal 50 (2005), 967, 971, et seqGoogle Scholar.
13 Belley, Jean-Guy, “L'orgueil de la société par actions,” in Les sept péchés capitaux et le droit privé, ed. Fortin, Véronique et al. (Montreal: Thémis, 2007), 49Google Scholar.
14 Asking how Jean-Guy Belley thinks might be undertaken in the spirit of Douglas, Mary's inquiry in How Institutions Think (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1986)Google Scholar, which is a clear influence on Belley's essay translated here. One suspects that Douglas, 's work, especially Purity and Danger(1966; reprint, New York: Routledge Classics, 2008)Google Scholar, is one of the many strands that make up Jean-Guy Belley's legal pluralism.