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Law as a Social System Niklas Luhmann (Prior to his death in 1998, Niklas Luhmann was Emeritus Professor of Sociology at Bielefeld University)

Law as a Social System By Niklas Luhmann (Prior to his death in 1998, Niklas Luhmann was Emeritus Professor of Sociology at Bielefeld University)

Summary

This work represents Niklas Luhmann's definitive application of systems theory to the understanding of law. In it Luhmann reviews past attempts to create a theory of law and argues they all fail to capture how law operates in modern society. He presents an alternative, critical theory through analysing law as a system of communication.

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Law as a Social System Summary

Law as a Social System by Niklas Luhmann (Prior to his death in 1998, Niklas Luhmann was Emeritus Professor of Sociology at Bielefeld University)

Modern 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 practices? However, unlike conventional legal theory this volume seeks to provide an answer in terms of a general social theory: a methodology that answers the question in a manner applicable not only to law, but also to all the other complex and highly differentiated systems within modern society, such as politics, the economy, religion, the media, and education. This sociological approach offers profound insights into the relationships between law and other social systems.

About Niklas Luhmann (Prior to his death in 1998, Niklas Luhmann was Emeritus Professor of Sociology at Bielefeld University)

Prior to his death in 1998, Niklas Luhammn was Emeritus Professor of Sociology at Bielefeld University. This work has been translated from the original German by Prof. Alex Ziegert, and edited by Fatima Kastner, Richard Nobles, David Schiff, and Rosamund Ziegert.

Table of Contents

Preface ; 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

Additional information

CIN0199546126G
9780199546121
0199546126
Law as a Social System by Niklas Luhmann (Prior to his death in 1998, Niklas Luhmann was Emeritus Professor of Sociology at Bielefeld University)
Used - Good
Paperback
Oxford University Press
2008-06-19
512
N/A
Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.
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