Navigating law's complexities: Concepts for postnational law - A reply to Nico Krisch

In this Reply to the article by Nico Krisch, the idea of entangled legalities is questioned from a theoretical point of view. Pointing out entanglement empirically is not enough to give the concept body; it needs to be embedded in a theory of law. Elaborating Krisch's critique on seeing law as a system, I argue that entanglement implies a concept of law that is practice-based: a shift from norms to what actors do with law. A practice-based view of law focuses on interactions between actors, highlighting the social and value-laden character of law. This reconceptualizes systemic thinking as a tradition that has developed in legal practices and broadens the concept of law to include postnational phenomena as an integral part of what law is. Using an example from climate change litigation, I argue that this conceptualization tracks normative claims by legal actors that no longer make a sharp distinction between formal legal norms and other normative standards. Combining entanglement and law as practice thus helps to make sense of postnational legal practices.