The Rule of Interlegality

Authors

Nicole Roughan

Document Type

Article

Abstract

A “recognition model of legality” grounds legality upon the normative significance of recognition of the role of the official of law, and the requirements of a moral relation of recognition between law’s officials and subjects. On this model, plural overlapping claims to legality can undermine the rule of law by disrupting recognition of both the role of the official and the moral relation of legality between officials and subjects. This Essay examines the legality deficits that arise from conflicting recognitions of officiality and subjection in contexts of overlapping state and Indigenous legal orders. In such contexts of plural overlapping claims to legality, rescuing legality requires realising interlegality—an interaction between legal orders through which both recognise their relation to the other. To have the rule of interlegality is to have interlegal forms and institutions for contesting overlapping claims to legal ordering, and for operating relations between legal orders, avoiding the forceful control of one legal order by another.

Recommended Citation

Nicole Roughan, The Rule of Interlegality, 72 Buff. L. Rev. (2024).
Available at: https://digitalcommons.law.buffalo.edu/buffalolawreview/vol72/iss5/6