This article aims to explore the complexities of legal stratification phenomena that concern all jurisdictions. Legal stratification is indeed everywhere – outside and within the Western borders. What changes from one system to the other is the degree of pressure that official legal layers - including domestic, foreign and international ones - are able to exert on the unofficial layers. Taking into account legal stratification represents a necessary and preliminary step to understanding and describing the legal systems one deals with, no matter what perspective is (e.g., purely domestic, international or comparative) one takes.
