This is the first book to consider German sociologist Niklas Luhmann's social theory in a critical legal context. His theory is introduced here both in terms of society at large and the legal system specifically, and the book reveals the aporetic structure of autopoiesis, aligning it with postmodern approaches to law. Readers will find it operates both as an introduction to the relevance of Luhmann's social theory for law, as well as a critical response to autopoiesis.

Niklas Luhmann: Law, Justice, Society presents the work of sociologist Niklas Luhmann in a radical new light. Luhmann’s theory is here introduced both in terms of society at large and the legal system specifically, and for the first time, Luhmann’s texts are systematically read together with theoretical insights from post-structuralism, deconstruction, phenomenology, radical ethics, feminism and post-ecologism. In his far-reaching book, Andreas Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos distances Luhmann’s theory from its misrepresentations as conservative, rigorously positivist and disconnected from empirical reality, and firmly locates it in a sphere of post-ideological jurisprudence. The book operates both as a detailed explanation of the theory’s concepts and as the locus of a critique which brings forth Luhmann’s radical credentials. The focal points are Luhmann’s concept of society and the law’s paradoxical connection to justice. However, these concepts are also transgressed in order to show how the law deals with the illusion of its identity, and more broadly how the theory itself deals with its limitations. This is illustrated by examples drawn from human rights, constitutional theory and ecological thinking. On the whole, Niklas Luhmann: Law, Justice, Society serves both as an introductory text and as a critical response to Luhmann’s theory, and is recommended reading for students and researchers in sociology, law, social sciences, politics and whoever is interested in seeing the influential work of Niklas Luhmann from a critical new perspective.

What does it mean to adopt a sociological perspective on law? Treating law as an aspect of social life, part of a larger social environment, the aim is to understand the environment and law's place within it systematically and empirically. The papers in these two volumes reflect the variety of these sociological perspectives and have been carefully selected from the wide range of literature currently available.

The problem of the minority voice is an old problem, but one that has not been adequately dealt with. Democracy, in the forms in which it has been institutionalized, has not insured humane prison conditions, equality of the sexes, satisfactory child protection, adequate legal representation, or minority rights; indeed, democracy is often advanced as an excuse for ignoring these issues. The problem of getting a fair and effective hearing for the small, the weak, the poor, and the disadvantaged still lies before us. Such are some of the questions of law, justice and the state toward which the studies in this volume were meant to be directed. They are among the vital questions of our time, and not only in Europe.This volume presents papers which were all delivered at the 16th IVR World Congress in Reykjavík. Many legal theorists, social philosophers and social scientists have done an excellent work on the topics of nationality and nationalism, the state, the evolution of democracy, competing conceptions of justice, and ideologies and strategies for the future.

CSA Sociological Abstracts abstracts and indexes the international literature in sociology and related disciplines in the social and behavioral sciences. The database provides abstracts of journal articles and citations to book reviews drawn from over 1,800+ serials publications, and also provides abstracts of books, book chapters, dissertations, and conference papers.