Review

Reviewed Work(s): Law as an Autopoietic System. by Gunther Teubner

Review by: Joachim J. Savelsberg
Source: Contemporary Sociology, Vol. 23, No. 3 (May, 1994), pp. 411-412
Published by: American Sociological Association
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2075352
Accessed: 05-12-2017 23:25 UTC

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412 REVIEWS
paradoxes of self-reference that result from
positive law. God laughed-in the Talmudic
story that opens the book-when natural law,
secular power, and divine revelation were all
outscored by the formal legal majority
principle, enacted when God handed down
the Torah on Mount Sinai. Critical legal
studies that derail paradoxes of legal thought
cannot grasp the paradoxes illustrated by this
story. To do so, Teubner argues, it is
necessary to recognize circularity as a prob-
lem of the sociological reality of legal
practice, not of legal thought. He holds that a
theory of autopoietic law is best suited to
succeed in this project.
Teubner understands autopoiesis as a "par-
ticular combination of various mechanisms of
self-reference" (p. 22) that go beyond
self-observation and self-description (i.e., the regulation who recognize program failures
regulation of self-production) to include
self-organization, the self-production of all
system components (legal acts, norms, proce-
dures, and doctrine), and the self-mainte-
nance of self-producing cycles (hypercycle).
Do legal systems constitute such a hypercy-
cle? Teubner answers with a "qualified yes."
Yet not all law is autopoietic, and autopoiesis suggestions.
is, according to Teubner, a graduated con-
cept. Law develops from a socially diffuse
state (where its components are identical with
those of general communication) to partial
autonomy (where legal norms become formal
norms and are no longer just means to social
ends, and where legal discourse begins to
define its own components) to autopoietic
autonomy. Only in this latest stage do law and
society relate to each other in "blind
evolution."
Does Teubner's book keep its promise? I
am not sure. First, accessibility is a problem.
The 158-page text is concise, but it is also
very demanding. And, although it is English,
this book's language will be foreign to most
readers. It awaits translators and operational-
izers, and- given considerable translation
problems and potential for misreadings-the
author will not agree with all forthcoming
interpretations. Second, one question that
interests this reviewer (and to which he did
not find an answer) is how-in the opening
story-the substantive content of the conflict-After reading this volume, I had a feeling of
ing rabbinical positions emerged and why
Rabbi Eliezer's position was opposed by all
others. Last, Teubner may overestimate the
autopoietic qualities of modem law while
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underestimating the potential of formal legal
procedures to be bent for the sake of
substantive goal achievement (substantivation
of law).
Teubner certainly offers a genuinely socio-
logical theory of law. His is not simply
another sociology of norms, professions, or
organizations accidentally placed in the legal
sphere. Teubner also goes beyond the inter-
pretation of text to reach the fundamental
mechanisms that characterize the social prac-
tice of law and distinguish it from other
subsystems of society. Finally, Teubner
provides a sociological challenge to propo-
nents of regulation, and some may mistake
his argument as antiregulatory ideology. Yet
Teubner's theory has to be taken particularly
seriously by theorists and proponents of
and desperately search for new mechanisms
to achieve policy goals. While competing
theories on regulation lend themselves to
conclusions different from Teubner's (e.g.,
Renate Mayntz and Philip Selznick, with
whom Teubner argues), competition among
theories is needed to identify the most useful
Teubner certainly challenges established
conceptual and theoretical traditions, within
law and society and critical legal studies and
beyond. The response of their protagonists
(and the success of future attempts at
translation) will determine whether and how
this book becomes "a new standard point of
departure." Law as an Autopoietic System is
highly recommended to those who love
intellectual challenges and who have an
interest in the sociology of law and sociolog-
ical theory.
The Social Structure of Right and Wrong, by
Donald Black. San Diego: Academic Press,
1993. 224 pp. $49.95 cloth. ISBN: 0-12-
102800-3.
PAT LAUDERDALE
School of Justice
Arizona State University
deja vu, all over again. I had read the
majority of the chapters in print before, some
in slightly different versions more than once.
Most of the information in six of the eight