Juridical pluralism: Contemporary new paradigm?

This paper discusses one of the central themes of contemporary juridical sociology, namely: juridical pluralism. In general, there is a situation of juridical pluralism when in the same geopolitical space we hold more than one juridical order as, for instance, the State law, in one side, and, in the other side, the law of the “favela”, a typical case of Brazilian society, illustrated by several empirical studies already carried out in several communities. So, what attracts attention and arouses interest for research is the fact that, in modern society, the state is characterized exactly by the monopoly of production and application of law, as well as by the monopoly of legitimate physical violence, phenomenon unprecedented in human history before the modern age. However, since the 70 years of the twentieth century, juridical sociologists have presented empirical research that reveal the existence of alternative ways of conflict resolution, in comparison to those proper to the State. In this sense, we wonder: would not the paradigm of juridical pluralism be more suitable for reading law in contemporary Brazilian society? Same question put in another way, would juridical monism be an insufficient model to encompass the various manifestations of law in contemporary Brazilian society? Therefore, we sought to demonstrate the insufficiency of the monistic model to explain the juridical phenomenon today. This task is performed through the presentation of several surveys conducted in the country, being demonstrated that juridical pluralism is more appropriate to be shown as a paradigm to read law in contemporary society.