Gunther Teubner

Bio: Gunther Teubner is an academic researcher from Goethe University Frankfurt. The author has contributed to research in topics: Philosophy of law & Private law. The author has an hindex of 43, co-authored 201 publications receiving 8176 citations. Previous affiliations of Gunther Teubner include University of Bremen & European University Institute.

Substantive and Reflexive Elements in Modern Law

Abstract: The most comprehensive efforts to develop a new evolutionary approach to law are found in the work of Nonet and Selznick in the United States and Habermas and Luhmann in Germany. While these theorists are concerned with a common problem-the crisis of formal rationality of law-they differ drastically in their accounts of the problem and their vision of the future. This paper tries to resolve these differences by first decomposing and then restructuring the diverse neo-evolutionary models. Using a more comprehensive model of socio-legal covariation, the author identifies an emerging kind of legal structure which he calls reflexive law. Reflexive law is characterized by a new kind of legal self-restraint. Instead of taking over regulatory responsibility for the outcome of social processes, reflexive law restricts itself to the installation, correction, and redefinition of democratic self-regulatory mechanisms. The author identifies areas of private law in which reflexive solutions are arguably emerging, and he spells out the consequences which a concern for reflexivity has for a renewed sociological jurisprudence.

Substantive and reflexive elements in modern law

Abstract: spheres of action for the autonomous pursuit of private interests. In doing so, it guarantees a framework within which substantive value judgments are made by private actors. Thus, "formalities" facilitate private ordering. They are "premised on the lawmaker's indifference as to which of a number of alternative relationships the parties decide to enter" (Kennedy, 1976: 1685; cf. Heller, 1979: 187). The corollary elements of formal law are: conventionality, legalism, and universalism (Habermas, 1976: 264; cf. Unger, 1976: 204). (2) With this orientation, formal law fulfills specific external social functions. Formal law develops its own system rationality insofar as it establishes spheres for autonomous This content downloaded from 207.46.13.80 on Thu, 11 Aug 2016 06:13:06 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

Regime-Collisions: The Vain Search for Legal Unity in the Fragmentation of Global Law

Abstract: Global legal pluralism is not simply a result of political pluralism, but is instead the expression of deep contradictions between colliding sectors of a global society. At core, the fragmentation of global law is not simply about legal norm collisions or policyconflicts, but rather has its origin in contradictions between society-wide institutionalized rationalities, which law cannot solve, but which demand a new legal approach to colliding norms. This thesis will be evolved with three arguments: (1) The fragmentation of global law is more radical than any single reductionist perspective - legal, political, economic or cultural - can comprehend. Legal fragmentation is merely an ephemeral reflection of a more fundamental, multidimensional fragmentation of global society itself. (2) Any aspirations to a normative unity of global law are thus doomed from the outset. A meta-level at which conflicts might be solved is wholly elusive both in global law and in global society. Instead, we might expect intensified legal fragmentation. (3) Legal fragmentation cannot itself be combated. At the best, a weak normative compatibility of the fragments might be achieved. However, this is dependent upon the ability of conflicts law to establish a specific network logic, which can effect a loose coupling of colliding units.

Law as an autopoietic system

Abstract: "And God laughed" the new self-referentiality law - a hypercycle blind legal evolution social regulation through reflexive law intersytemic law of conflict unitas multiplex - corporate governance as an example.

Legal Irritants: Good Faith in British Law or How Unifying Law Ends Up in New Differences

Abstract: Legal irritant explains the transfer of legal rules from one country to another better than legal transplant. When a foreign rule is imposed on a domestic culture, it is not transplanted into another organism, rather it works as a fundamental irritation which triggers a whole series of new and unexpected events. It irritates law's binding arrangements with other social sectors. Legal irritants cannot be domesticated, they are not transformed from something alien into something familiar, not adapted to a new cultural context, rather they will unleash an evolutionary dynamics in which the external rule's meaning will be reconstructed anew and the internal context will undergo fundamental change. As the example of the imposition of good faith on English law demonstrates, the concept of legal irritants has far-reaching consequences for the transfer of private law rules from one economic culture to the other. The imperatives of a specific Anglo-American economic culture as against a specific Continental one will bring about a fundamental reconstruction of good faith under the new conditions.

International Norm Dynamics and Political Change

Abstract: Norms have never been absent from the study of international politics, but the sweeping “ideational turn” in the 1980s and 1990s brought them back as a central theoretical concern in the field. Much theorizing about norms has focused on how they create social structure, standards of appropriateness, and stability in international politics. Recent empirical research on norms, in contrast, has examined their role in creating political change, but change processes have been less well-theorized. We induce from this research a variety of theoretical arguments and testable hypotheses about the role of norms in political change. We argue that norms evolve in a three-stage “life cycle” of emergence, “norm cascades,” and internalization, and that each stage is governed by different motives, mechanisms, and behavioral logics. We also highlight the rational and strategic nature of many social construction processes and argue that theoretical progress will only be made by placing attention on the connections between norms and rationality rather than by opposing the two.

The Institutional Dynamics of International Political Orders

Abstract: The history of international political orders is written in terms of continuity and change in domestic and international political relations. As a step toward understanding such continuity and change, we explore some ideas drawn from an institutional perspective. An institutional perspective is characterized in terms of two grand issues that divide students of international relations and other organized systems. The first issue concerns the basic logic of action by which human behavior is shaped. On the one side are those who see action as driven by a logic of anticipated consequences and prior preferences. On the other side are those who see action as driven by a logic of appropriateness and a sense of identity. The second issue concerns the efficiency of history. On the one side are those who see history as efficient in the sense that it follows a course leading to a unique equilibrium dictated by exogenously determined interests, identities, and resources. On the other side are those who see history as inefficient in the sense that it follows a meandering, path-dependent course distinguished by multiple equilibria and endogenous transformations of interests, identities, and resources. We argue that the tendency of students of international political order to emphasize efficient histories and consequential bases for action leads them to underestimate the significance of rule- and identity-based action and inefficient histories. We illustrate such an institutional perspective by considering some features of the coevolution of politics and institutions, particularly the ways in which engagement in political activities affects the definition and elaboration of political identities and the development of competence in politics and the capabilities of political institutions.

The New Penology : Notes on the emerging strategy of corrections and its implications

Abstract: The new penology argues that an important new language of penology is emerging. This new language, which has its counterparts in other areas of the law as well, shifts focus away from the traditional concerns of the criminal law and criminology, which have focused on the individual, and redirects it to actuarial consideration of aggregates. This shift has a number of important implications: It facilitates development of a vision or model of a new type of criminal process that embraces increased reliance on imprisonment and that merges concerns for surveillance and custody, that shifts away from a concern with punishing individuals to managing aggregates of dangerous groups, and that affects the training and practice of criminologists.