When thinking about law, we tend to think about rules and principles—the kind of explicit norms that we interpret in order to bring a measure of order and predictability to our social life. These are often called “substantive” norms, as opposed to those pertaining to process, rhetoric, or “form”. But when we seek to approach a legal sensibility, that is, to understand what makes a legal tradition what it is, this type of legal knowledge comes up surprisingly short: The general principles of equity, fairness, and harm prevention between us humans and the social and natural worlds of which we are a part, can actually appear very similar across different legal traditions.

What, then, should we pay attention to in order to honour the distinctiveness of a legal tradition? This question has particular resonance when it comes to the revitalization of Indigenous legal orders within societies engaged in processes of reconciliation and decolonization. Drawing on research with Coast Salish peoples of British Columbia, Canada, this talk sheds light on the role of another kind of normativity in shaping the specificity and continuity of a legal tradition: The normative commitments underlying the legitimacy and authority of communication within a given meaning-making community.

Andrée Boisselle is Associate Professor at Osgoode Hall Law School (York University) in Toronto, Canada, where she teaches courses in Canadian Aboriginal Law (the state’s law and case law defining Indigenous rights within the Canadian legal order) as well as Indigenous Law (the content and implementation of Indigenous legal traditions within the Canadian legal order). Her scholarship pertains to legal pluralism, decoloniality, constitutionalism, and the revitalization of Indigenous legalities. Her dissertation (Law’s Hidden Canvas: Teasing Out the Threads of Coast Salish Legal Sensibility) stems from a decade of engagement with Stó:lō / Coast Salish communities in British Columbia, on the southern Pacific Coast of Canada.

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