As we move towards a more global legal community, often with accompanying injustice and violence, Mireille Delmas-Marty demonstrates that there is an urgent need to reconstruct the national and international legal landscapes. Legal reasoning can be applied to concepts such as human rights for European citizens in the new world order. In this book the author argues for a rule of law that is common in every sense of the word: accessible to all rather than reserved exclusively for officials, common to the various legal sectors despite increasing specialization, and common to diverse States. The book will be of interest to all comparative European lawyers, and to social scientists and legal theorists grappling with contemporary issues in legal pluralism and globalization.

Mireille Delmas-Marty is Professor at the Université de Paris I and a member of the University Institute of France.

Preface; List of abbreviations; Table of cases cited by jurisdiction; Introduction; Part I. Reconstructing the Landscape: 1. Disappearing landmarks; 2. Emerging sources; 3. Redrawing the lines; Part II. Building on Multiplicity: 4. Prescribe: from precise rules to vague notions; 5. Interpret: from classical logic to 'new' logics; 6. Legitimate: from general legal principles to a 'law of human rights'; Part III. Reinventing Common Law: 7. The challenge of specialist societies; 8. The European laboratory; 9. The worldwide stakes; Author index; Index.