SOAS Research Online

Abstract

In the wider context of globalisation, legal plurality as a fact, and legal pluralism as an increasingly prominent methodological tool to make sense of ubiquitous legal conflicts, this article focuses on India. Since traditional methods of Eurocentric secular approaches to legal analysis have by now become inadequate for global use, it explores efforts to analyse what ethical forms of responsible governance in the Global South may look like, and how this relates to justice. It is argued that these challenges require responsible forms of governance, with careful incorporation of a plurality of diverse and local values. This complex scenario implies, then, that future legal education in India and elsewhere in the Global South needs to be invigorated through more recognition of the input of ethics and values, and consideration of local law-related factors to suit global Southern conditions and people’s needs. These mainly culture-specific elements, as building blocks in the bricolage of postmodern nation states and their structures of governance, appear to play an important role that ‘black letter’ lawyers presently struggle to identify, make sense of and accept. As responsible governance in the age of globalisation can neither be achieved through ‘benevolent’ dictatorship, nor simple foreign transplants, nor through adoption of international norms, more focused attention to ethics and local legal realities in legal education processes, governance and judicial decision-making seems therefore a sensible way forward