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Journal ArticleDOI

Law as a Social System

01 Jan 2006-Modern Law Review (Blackwell Publishing Ltd)-Vol. 69, Iss: 1, pp 123-129
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors propose a method to solve the problem of homonymity of homophily in the context of homomorphic data, and no abstracts are available.
Abstract: No abstract available.
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DissertationDOI
05 Jun 2007
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors analyze to what extent changed circumstances that are contractually relevant, so as to characterize the legal figure of excessive onerosity, a situation of material burden for complying with a given obligation on one of the contracting parties, bring about effects on the payoffs derived from so-called engineering agreements, understood as agreements for the development of large-scale industrial and infrastructure projects.
Abstract: The aim of this work is to analyze to what extent changed circumstances that are contractually relevant, so as to characterize the legal figure of excessive onerosity [a situation of material burden for complying with a given obligation on one of the contracting parties] pursuant to the Brazilian Civil Code, bring about effects on the payoffs the contracting parties derive from so-called engineering agreements, understood as agreements for the development of large-scale industrial and infrastructure projects. The work traces back the historical and social context of such agreements and describes their main distinguishing features, especially the complexity and risk elements of their underlying economic transactions. The work also describes such agreements as “socially” codified agreements, subject to the discipline of a legally codified figure called “empreitada” [or contractor agreement]. The work also discusses how court precedents deal with the legal figure of excessive onerosity and describes the deal structures normally used in such agreements for the purposes of risk allocation. Finally, the work discusses the application of Law & Economics models, such as the Theory of Incomplete Contracts, as a tool for evaluating the applicability of rules governing the legal figure of excessive onerosity to engineering agreements and analyzing their respective effects. Key-words: engineering agreements – excessive onerosity– complexity – risk allocation – Law & Economics – Theory of Incomplete Contracts.

9 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Prior to the loss of legal aid for many litigants in private law Children Act proceedings occasioned by the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012, family lawyers were observed...
Abstract: Prior to the loss of legal aid for many litigants in private law Children Act proceedings occasioned by the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012, family lawyers were observed ...

9 citations


Cites background from "Law as a Social System"

  • ...…itself by the network of its own operations (communications), thereby perfecting its own autopoiesis.5 Luhmann defines an autopoietic social system as one that ‘produces and reproduces its own elements by the interaction of its elements’ (Luhmann, 1989, p. 136; see also Luhmann, 2013, p. 77)....

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  • ...Law’s function in modern society is to maintain normative expectations in the face of disappointment (Luhmann, 1989, 2004)....

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Journal ArticleDOI
18 Apr 2018
TL;DR: The Turkish Constitutional Court is often described as an agent of the raison d'etat as mentioned in this paper, and a number of judgements confirm this assessment, by shifting the focus from result to process the artic...
Abstract: The Turkish Constitutional Court is often described as an agent of the raison d’etat. Although a number of judgements confirm this assessment, by shifting the focus from result to process the artic...

9 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
Chih-Chieh Tang1
TL;DR: In this article, Niklas Luhmann's insights are introduced, which take a fully temporalized concept of event as departure, in order to build an adequate theory of event that complements the idea of eventful temporality.
Abstract: In recent discussions about event as the foundation of historical research, it is William H Sewell Jr who has developed the most comprehensive version. However, Sewell’s theory of the event is not adequately articulated and is even one-sidedly dominated by his theory of structure. He did not take the problem of self-reference (and therefore circular causality) seriously enough, with the consequence that his emphasis on eventful temporality and contingency could not be carried through to the end. This article attempts to overcome such shortcomings by introducing Niklas Luhmann’s insights, which take a fully temporalized concept of event as departure, in order to build an adequate theory of event that complements the idea of eventful temporality.

9 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
Hanne Knudsen1
TL;DR: Worry conversations (in Danish, bekymringssamtale) and other network meetings are normally described as offering integrated solutions to complex problems by connecting a variety of views and resour...
Abstract: Worry conversations (in Danish, bekymringssamtale) and other network meetings are normally described as offering integrated solutions to complex problems by connecting a variety of views and resour...

9 citations


Cites background from "Law as a Social System"

  • ...Function systems have different functions: economy functions to allocate scarce resources, law to serve as society’s immune system, education to form humans, and politics to make collective decisions on society’s behalf (Luhmann, 1982a, 2004, 2012; Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos, 2010)....

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References
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Journal ArticleDOI
Ralf Michaels1
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors discuss how legal pluralism engages with legal globalization and how legal globalization utilizes legal plurality, and provide an outlook on the future of global legal plurality as theory and practice.
Abstract: Some challenges of legal globalization closely resemble those formulated earlier for legal pluralism: the irreducible plurality of legal orders, the coexistence of domestic state law with other legal orders, the absence of a hierarchically superior position transcending the differences. This review discusses how legal pluralism engages with legal globalization and how legal globalization utilizes legal pluralism. It demonstrates how several international legal disciplines—comparative law, conflict of laws, public international law, and European Union law—have slowly begun to adopt some ideas of legal pluralism. It shows how traditional themes and questions of legal pluralism—the definition of law, the role of the state, of community, and of space—are altered under conditions of globalization. It addresses interrelations between different legal orders and various ways, both theoretical and practical, to deal with them. And it provides an outlook on the future of global legal pluralism as theory and practic...

287 citations

Posted Content
TL;DR: A growing body of literature in organization studies draws on the idea that communication constitutes organization, often abbreviated to CCO as discussed by the authors and introduces Luhmann's theory of social systems as a prominent example of CCO thinking.
Abstract: A growing body of literature in organization studies draws on the idea that communication constitutes organization, often abbreviated to CCO This paper introduces Luhmann’s theory of social systems as a prominent example of CCO thinking I argue that Luhmann’s perspective contributes to current conceptual debates on how communication constitutes organization The theory of social systems highlights that organizations are fundamentally grounded in paradox because they are built on communicative events that are contingent by nature Consequently, organizations are driven by the continuous need to deparadoxify their inherent contingency In that respect, Luhmann’s approach fruitfully combines a processual, communicative conceptualization of organization with the notion of boundary and self-referentiality Notwithstanding the merits of Luhmann’s approach, its accessibility tends to be limited due to the hermetic terminology that it employs and the fact that it neglects the role of material agency in the communicative construction of organizations

114 citations

Posted Content
TL;DR: The concept of transnational legal pluralism as mentioned in this paper has been proposed to understand the evolution of law in relation and response to the development of "world society" in the context of regulatory governance.
Abstract: This paper draws out the analogies and connections between long-standing legal sociological insights into pluralistic legal orders and present concerns with the fragmentation of law outside of the nation state. Within the nation-state, the discovery of legal pluralism inspired a larger contestation of concepts of legal formalism, of the alleged unity of the legal order and of the hierarchy of norms against the background of a consistently advancing process of constitutionalization. This research heightened regulators’ sensitivity to blind spots and exclusionary dynamics in the design of rights, leading inter alia to wide-ranging efforts to render more effective access to justice, legal aid and legal representation. Another important consequence concerned an increased awareness of different levels and sites of norm-creation in various societal areas. Much of this is mirrored by today’s quest for a just, democratic and equitable global legal order, for example in the debate about ‘fragmentation of international law’ or ‘global administrative law’. But, while the legal pluralism debate largely unfolded in the context (and contestation) of relatively mature legal orders and institutions, such institutional frameworks and safeguards are largely absent on the international plane. As a result, the emergence of numerous norm-setting agencies, specialized courts and tribunals and regulatory networks are perceived as obstacles or impediments to the creation of a sound legal order on a global scale, rather than as inherent traits of an evolving legal order.In order to grasp the increasingly transterritorial nature of regulatory governance it is necessary to revisit the arguments in support of legal pluralism and, in particular, the legal pluralist critique of the association of law with the state. On that basis, it becomes possible to read the currently dominant narrative of the ‘end of law’ in an era of globalisation in a different light. Rather than describing the advent of globalisation as an end-point of legal development, the transnational perspective seeks to deconstruct the various law-state associations by understanding the evolution of law in relation and response to the development of ‘world society’. The currently lamented lack of democratic accountability, say, in international economic governance, can then be perceived as a further consequence in a highly differentiated and de-territorialized society. The paper thus rejects the attempts by lawyers to re-align transnational governance actors with traditional concepts of the state or of civil society and, instead, contrasts them with various advances in sociology and anthropology with regard to the evolution of ‘social norms’ and ‘spaces’ of governance and regulation. These perspectives effectively challenge present attempts to conceptualize a hierarchically structured global legal order. This article’s proposed concept of ‘transnational legal pluralism’ [TLP] goes beyond Philip Jessup’s 1956 idea of ‘transnational law’, through which he sought to both complement and challenge Public and Private International Law. TLP brings together insights from legal sociology and legal theory with research on global justice, ethics and regulatory governance to illustrate the transnational nature of law and regulation, always pushing against the various claims to legal unity and hierarchy made over time.

81 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors present a perspective on the interaction between formal and informal institutions in spatial planning in which they transform each other continuously, in processes that can be described and analyzed as ongoing reinterpretations.
Abstract: In this article, we present a perspective on the interaction between formal and informal institutions in spatial planning in which they transform each other continuously, in processes that can be described and analyzed as ongoing reinterpretations. The effects of configurations and dialectics are often ambiguous, only partially observable, different in different domains and at different times. By means of analyses of key concepts in planning theory and practice, this perspective is illustrated and developed. Finally, we analyze transformation options in planning systems, emphasizing the limits of formal institutions in transforming formal/informal configurations, and stressing the importance of judgment and conflict.

79 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: A review of the preceding scholarly work and attempts to contextualize it in debates around global governance and global constitutionalism can be found in this paper, where the authors suggest that we ought to revisit legal sociological insights into the emergence of legal pluralism.
Abstract: Transnational law, since its iteration by Philip Jessup in the 1950s, has inspired a league of scholars to investigate into the scope, doctrine, sources and practice of border-crossing legal regulation. This paper reviews much of this preceding scholarly work and attempts to contextualize it in debates around global governance and global constitutionalism. These debates are no longer confined to international lawyers or political scientists. Together with anthropologists, sociologists, geographers and legal philosophers and legal theorists, these scholars have been significantly widening the scope of their investigation. The current, multi - and interdisciplinary research into the prospects of political sovereignty, democratic governance and legal regulation on a global scale suggests a further continuation of such intellectual bricolage and collaboration. The here presented paper builds on a larger research project into the methodology of transnational law and suggests that we ought to revisit legal sociological insights into the emergence of legal pluralism to make sense of today’s co-evolution of ‘formal’ and ‘informal’, ‘public’ and ‘private’ laws – and social norms.

65 citations