The Fluid Landscape of Legal Systems
Question 2
Roger Cotterrell has written the following: “What all of these indications add up to is the recognition that neither legal systems nor societies can be thought of as unified and integrated in the way that western thought has often assumed. A comparative legal perspective is no more than the systematic recognition that law is always fluid, pluralistic, contested and subject to often contradictory pressures from both inside and outside its jurisdiction; that it reflects an always unstable diversity of traditions, interests, allegiances, and ultimate values and beliefs. If the comparative perspective on law was once a view of the exotic ‘legal other’ or of the ‘external relations’ of one’s own law with the law of other peoples in other lands, now it is a view of transnational legal patterns and of the cultural complexities of law at home. We live in conditions where the law of the nation-state must respond to a great plurality of demands from different population groups within its jurisdiction. At the same time, it must respond to powerful external pressures. Legal thought in national contexts is being fragmented from within in a new ‘jurisprudence of difference’…and globalized from without in demands for transnational harmonization or uniformity. (“Culture, Comparison, Community” by Roger Cotterrell) Kindly react to this statement, supporting your personal views and conclusions with research, analysis, examples and well-reasoned argumentation.

I. Introduction
1 The phenomenon of ‘globalisation’, exemplified by the growing interconnectedness between nations, leads to inevitable interactions between legal systems. Roger Cotterell’s statement illuminates the myriad of overlapping concepts in comparative law that facilitates our understanding of these interactions.

2 In response to his statement, this paper seeks to