Legal pluralism and dispute resolution: a comparative study of the evolution of the practice in Ireland and Brazil with a focus on issues involving culture and religion

Abstract

The practice of Dispute Resolution, as an alternative instrument of justice to resolve conflicts between litigants, has now reached a status of great importance, as it has helped the judiciary in numerous countries to avoid the accumulation of cases and confrontation in the courts. This success is not only due to the speed that the self-compositional forms of justice, especially mediation and conciliation, reach in solving the processes, but also to the possibility of relating to other devices, such as legal pluralism. Motivated by this, this research comes to analyze, through a comparative study, the evolution of the practice of Dispute Resolution in Brazil and Ireland, from the integration of legal pluralism in their processes and its use in the effective resolution of disputes motivated by religious and cultural issues, focusing mainly on family cases. The research was based on the thesis that the selfcompositional forms, using mechanisms of legal pluralism in both countries, was really effective in resolving conflicts, particularly those involving religious and cultural issues. To respond to this hypothesis, the research, of a quantitative and qualitative nature, was methodologically guided by the collection of data through the application of a survey to a sample population of 83 professionals in the field of Law and Dispute Resolution in Brazil and Ireland and supported by a rich secondary bibliography that worked on theories and concepts. The study proved that the practice has already been used in the judiciary of both countries for some years and associated with police agencies, private institutions and NGOs, it has effectively helped to reduce conflicts in the communities served. The research showed that this happens due to the fact that problems are dealt with in the family nucleus, preventing them from reaching a community dimension.