Law Without Roots: Mapping the Rhizomatic Turn in Legal Thought and Practice

Abstract

This special issue explores how legal systems evolve through dispersed, relational, and non-hierarchical processes. Drawing inspiration from Deleuze and Guattari’s notion of the rhizome (1980), contributors examine the ways in which law swings between polarities – sovereignty and subversion, norm and rupture – and sprawls across geographies, disciplines, and ontologies. The papers assembled here challenge arborescent legal imaginaries, proposing instead a fluid and transversal understanding of law’s formations, transplants, and transformations