The jurisprudence of Robert Cover

There is a recent paper on SSRN by Julien Etxabe entitled "Nomos, Conflict, and the Tragedy of Adjudication: The Jurisprudence of Robert Cover" that can be found here. A brief abstract is:

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Robert Cover is known for having argued that in every plural society there exist, along with the State, multiple normative entities that create and maintain their own sense of normativity, that is, their own holistic modes of assessing good and bad, valid and invalid, right and wrong. Beyond that, few systematic attempts have been made to pursue this view as a comprehensive theory of law. The principal aim of this piece is to demonstrate that Cover offers a novel and viable paradigm of law, which must at least include an ontology (an understanding of the basic units and organizational structure of law), an epistemology (an account of legal knowledge, reasoning, and interpretation), an axiology (how legal value is created, assessed, and maintained), and a sociology (how law relates to and fits in the larger non-legal environment).

I shall argue that such a paradigm is not only alternative to that of the most influential legal philosophers of the twentieth century, but offers a way out of many of their dilemmas. Among these, Cover's view of the nomos provides a flexible structure which overcomes the shortcomings associated with the Kelsenian pyramid. It suggests a model for the identification of law that reveals the inadequacies—and compensates for the deficiencies—of the Hartian rule of recognition, and a justification for the role of the judiciary, which, unlike the Dworkinian Hercules, does not obliterate but builds upon the constraints of jurisdiction.
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I must admit that I am not convinced. My criticisms of Cover's views on nomos and legal philosophy can be found in my paper "Let a Thousand Nomoi Bloom? Four Problems with Robert Cover's Nomos and Narrative" that can be found here. The paper's abstract is:

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Robert Cover's well known article "Nomos and Narrative" is a passionately argued defense of a new way of applying narrative to the philosophy and understanding of law. In my article, I argue that there are four major problems which lie at the heart of Cover's arguments. Each problem addresses a major area of his overall view of law. I try to demonstrate that in each case, if the problem is real, Cover's view of law should be jettisoned. The primary difficulty is analytical and argumentative sloppiness in Cover's arguments. My conclusion is simple: Cover's view of law is both underdeveloped and theoretically unsafe. It falls victim to each of the four problems I identify. As a result, his philosophy of law should be rejected tout court.
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