Law as a Social System
| Date | 01 January 2006 |
| Published date | 01 January 2006 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2230.2006.00579_4.x |
| Author | Emilios Christodoulidis |
by suggesting that whether the post-liberal agenda is likely to succeed when tried
again is an‘open question’ (p 238). In my view, any such attempt is likely to fail.
Michael Freema n
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Niklas Luhmann,Lawas a Social System, transKlaus Ziegert, edR Nobles et al,
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004, 490pp, hb d75.00.
Di⁄cult as it is to do justice to a book likeDasRechtderGesellschaftin a review, the
opportunity must be ta kento s alute the appearance in Engli sh of one of the major
works of the last decades in legal and social theory, or as Luhmann preferred to
put it more narrowly, this text in the sociology of law. It is, as he says in the Pre-
face, an attempt‘to understandlegal communicationas a part of society in opera-
tion’ (p vii). The emphasis here is on the‘communication’ and on the‘in operation’
and on both systems that arereferred to:law and society, the modeof their articulation^
crucial to the German title with its reliance on the use of the genitive in‘Society’s
Law’ but missed in the English ‘Law as a Social System’^one of the most intri-
guing, problematicaland suggestive aspects of Luhmann’s analysis.
This re-elaborationof the sociology oflaw, twenty-one years after the publica-
tion of the Rechtssoziologie, is part of a series of studies, each concentrating on one
of society’s ‘sub-systems’.These include studies on science, the economy, religion,
politics, art, etc, a venture that began with the ‘autopoietic turn’ and the publica-
tion in 1984 of Soziale Systeme^a book that Luhmann would later refer to as his
¢rst.This sets out the theoretical framework for the specialised studies to follow,
underlining in practice his theoretical point of departure, that society allows no
privileged viewpoint for its observation, no privileged language or meta-lan-
guage. And in each case, as is always the case with Luhmann, he picks up the
thread atthe beginning: everyaccount is a re-telling of the story and a re-elabora-
tion of the paradigm. And it is intriguing to see the development of his own
thought as he re-states the theory each time, the canvas immense as he moves
between levels of abstraction, to challenge ab initio what so often presents itself as
theoretically established and given. For Luhmann, the greater that givenness the
more pleasurable its theoretical dislodging.
A translation of a book such as this presents a momentous task and there will
inevitably be some misgivings. Predictably there are some problems with the
translation and some are more worrying than others for a theory that is stated
with such sharpness and precision in the original. Occasionally one would have
hoped for some greater freedom with the text too, which is sometimes cumber-
some in contrast to Luhmann’s more‘playful’, more ambivalent or suggestive for-
mulations. Buta great e¡ort hasbeen made in the workof translating, manyyears
in preparation, and credit must be given to Klaus Ziegert for the scholarship and
the care he has put into it. Gratitude should also be extended to all those who
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University College London.
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123The Modern LawReview Limited 2006
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