Robert Cover’s approach to law opened the door to multivalent
processes still further. Like other legal pluralists,30 Cover refused to give state
lawmaking any more legitimacy or authority than other normative
communities. Thus, he argued that “all collective behavior entailing
systematic understandings of our commitments to future worlds [can lay]
equal claim to the word ‘law.’”31 This formulation deliberately denies the
nation-state any special status as a law-giver. According to Cover, although