Description
Book SynopsisModern systems theory provides a new method for the analysis of society through an examination of the structures of its communications. In this volume, Niklas Luhmann, the theory''s leading exponent, explores its implications for our understanding of law.Luhmann argues that current thinking about how law operates within a modern society is seriously deficient. He lays out the theoretical and methodological tools that, he argues, can advance our understanding of contemporary society and in particular of the identity, performance, and function of the legal system within that society. In systems theory, society is its communications: they are its empirical reality; the items that can be observed and studied. Systems theory identifies how communications operate within a physical world and how different sub-systems of communication operate alongside each other.In this volume, Luhmann uses systems theory to address a question central to legal theory: what differentiates law from other social
Table of ContentsPreface ; Introduction ; 1. The Location of Legal Theory ; 2. The Operative Closure of the Legal System ; 3. The Function of Law ; 4. Coding and Programming ; 5. Justice: a Formula for Contingency ; 6. The Evolution of Law ; 7. The Position of Courts in the Legal System ; 8. Legal Argumentation ; 9. Politics and Law ; 10. Structural Couplings ; 11. The Self-description of the Legal System ; 12. Society and its Law ; Index
