This book of essays follows from and adds to the presentations, discussions and debates - the exchanges of ideas - of the Critical Legal Conference 2010, held in Utrecht 10-12 September at the Department of Legal Theory of the Faculty of Law (Utrecht University). The Critical Legal Conference is an annual gathering of legal scholars that share a critical outlook on law and legal scholarship. This year's conference focused, as a main theme, on exposing the normative abuse of law against the background of 'multiple modernities', i.e. the idea that modernity is not a single encompassing, Western concept but entails different traditions and ways of thought about contemporary society.