In the previous chapters in this volume, I explained the phenomenon of the fragmentation of law (Chapter 1) and analysed arguments serving to attain the unity of law (Chapter 2), while paying special attention to the proportionality analysis, which – if applied correctly – ensures concordance between individual rights and public interests in constitutional law (Chapter 3). Then I turned my attention to the contemporary pluralistic arrangement of the law, which may cause its fragmentation, but also its unification (Chapter 4). In this chapter, I will attempt to summarise the conclusions presented thus far, which should yield a theory of normative coherentism, providing a more comprehensive framework for the procedure denoted in this book as the defragmentation of law. This chapter will aim not only to explain how the individual phenomena described in the previous chapters are mutually related, but will especially emphasise how normative coherentism reinforces the unity and weakens the fragmentation of contemporary law.

I will start with the concept of coherence as presented in section 2.1 in Chapter 2. In this book, coherence is conceived as concordance, which manifests itself at multiple levels of the law: from a lack of logical inconsistencies among rules within a single regulation to compatibility of various legal regulations and the absence of teleological contradictions and unintended gaps, to concordance of the values standing behind the law. In the same chapter, I presented the basis of this concept of coherence – the foundation of the law in the form of principles, values and possibly also established legal doctrines and theoretical constructs in the law, such as judicial tests. This concept of coherence forms the groundwork on which I will try and build a “claim to normative coherentism”, which can be seen in both law-making and interpretation of the law. The doctrine of coherentism plays an important role in resolving disputable questions within a single legal order, as well as in dealing with conflicts of various legal systems as described in Chapter 4 on legal pluralism.