A better world through law? The implications of the theories of Niklas Luhmann for green economics
This paper considers the implications of the theories of Niklas Luhmann for attempts at achieving social change through law. According to Luhmann, modern society consists of all that can be communicated and understood as having meaning. Such communications are structured according to functionally differentiated subsystems such as law, politics, science, economics and education. Luhmann applies the biological term, 'autopoiesis', to explain how social systems produce and reproduce themselves by the interaction of their own elements and in so doing, participate in society's construction of reality. Each system distinguishes itself from its environment through binary codes and then reconstitutes phenomena entering its environment by applying its own internal binary code (such as legal/illegal in the case of law). This normative closure means that direct or simple exchanges or communications between social systems, or between individuals and social systems, are impossible. We therefore need to abandon notions of 'steering' social systems in predetermined ways and bringing about social change directly through legal norms. Progressive change may occur but this will depend more on how events entering each social system are reconstituted by those systems, rather than on the motivation and planning of social campaigners. Luhmann offers a way of describing society that seeks to engage with, rather than avoid, the increasing complexity and contingency of modern society, and which enables us to see that whether law achieves 'justice' depends on the viewpoint from which law (or any other social system) is being observed.
Child Welfare within Law: The Emergence of a Hybrid Discourse
Recent developments in English childcare law have shown that the current debate among legal theorists and sociologists of law over the relationship between law and science' has important practical implications. It is not merely one of those journeys into the realms of abstraction which so excite some academics, but which can safely be ignored by judges and practising lawyers who claim to live 'in the real world'. We have seen, for example, the rapid rise of the guardian ad litem the childcare specialist who advises judges and magistrates how best to further children's interests. Moreover, the 'discovery' in recent years of child sexual abuse has resulted in an increasing use by the courts of child psychologists and psychiatrists, not only to assess children and families, but also to adduce evidence of abuse. More recently, the Lord Chancellor has announced that High Court and county court judges destined to hear cases under the Children Act 1989 will receive a whole three weeks' specialist training organized by the Judicial Studies Board. This training is to include talks by such child welfare experts as child psychiatrists and guardians ad litem
Fundamental principles of the sociology of law
The innovative and revolutionary scholarship of the eminent Austrian legal theorist and professor of Roman law, Eugen Ehrlich (1862-1922), is of a very high caliber. His work has not only held its place well in view of what legal theory, especially sociological legal theory, has to offer, but is also still a powerful challenge to positions in legal theory that are no longer defensible. The sociology of law has followed in a direct line of succession from Ehrlich's observations and ideas as a new and special discipline linking jurisprudence with sociology.