Superficially at odds with the idea of empirical research, autopoiesis is shown on closer study to demand a fundamental reconsideration of the empirico-theoretical relationship. This idea is developed firstly in the context of a possible methodology and secondly in the application of that methodology to a particular regulatory situ ation. The aim is to arrive at a more adequately complex understanding of the regu latory process – as well as of the process of legal sociological research itself.

Excerpt: Am Beispiel von Recht und Organisation soll die Konstruktion des Hyperzyklus erprobt werden. Typische Strukturmerkmale des Rechts, besonders die Positivität des modernen Rechts, ebenso wie herausragende Merkmale formaler Organisation, besonders die Abgehobenheit der Organisation gegenüber ihrem Personenbestand und gegenüber inhaltlichen Festlegungen lassen sich aus der hyperzyklischen Verkettung von Systemkomponenten erklären. Darüberhinaus sollte die Konstruktion trennscharfe Kriterien für Rechtstypen unterschiedlichen Autonomisierungsgrades liefern. Ebenso müßte es gelingen, damit der Unterscheidung von Interaktion, Gruppe und Organisation neue Aspekte abzugewinnen. Und schließlich soll die Konstruktion etwas zur Erklärung der Evolution von Recht und Organisation beisteuern. Die historische Autonomisierung des Rechtsdiskurses ebenso wie die allmähliche kollektive und korporative Verfestigung der Organisation müßten sich als Steigerung von selbstreferentiellen Verhältnissen, kumulierend in ihrer hyperzyklischen Verkettung, darstellen lassen.

Taking Niklas Luhmann’s essay on the Return of the twelfth camel as a starting point, the article deals with some major consequences of legal autopoiesis, but shifts the focus from law’s internal self-reference to the external relations of law to society. It uses the idea of re-entry by Spencer Brown to analyse the problematic relation between the legal and the extra-legal. Consequence is a multiple alienation of law from its social origins. In this perspective the article begins to redefine four topics of social theory of law: the role of legal argument in litigation, the co-evolution of law and social production regimes, the potential of the social sciences in legal reality constructs, and the reconstruction of collective actors, particularly of the new ecological actants, in the legal discourse.

Key words: legal autopoiesis, legal alienation, re-entry of the extra-legal, co-evolution of law and social production regimes, legal person

Niklas Luhmann and Jacques Derrida start with a common assumption in their analyses of the law and the economy – the foundational paradox of social institutions. But then autopoiesis and deconstruction move into opposite directions. Luhmann pursues the question of how de-paradoxification constructs the immanence of social institutions and builds a world of autopoietic social systems. By contrast, Derrida’s thought aims at the transcendence of social institutions through their re-paradoxification. However, there is a hidden supplementarity of autopoiesis and deconstruction which makes it worthwhile to relate the theories to each other. Derrida’s distinction of writing/speech is necessarily blind toward Luhmann’s distinction of consciousness/communication, but is, at the same time, continuously provoked by it. On another level, the opposite happens. Luhmann’s autopoiesis is permanently irritated by Derrida’s différance but is at the same time unable to conceptualize it. This complementary blindness of their distinctions directrices is a permanent source of mutual irritation which requires a reformulation of the social and of the possibility of justice.

Key words: autopoiesis, deconstruction, justice, paradox, systems theory

Globalization processes imply the self-deconstruction of the hierarchy of legal norms. Thus, legal pluralism is no longer only an issue for legal sociology, but becomes a challenge for legal practice itself. Traditionally, rule making by `private regimes’ has been subjugated under the hierarchical frame of the national constitution. When this frame breaks, then the new frame of legal institutions can only be heterarchical. The origin of global non-state law as a sequence of recursive legal operations is an `as if’, not only a founding myth as a self-observation of law, rather the legal fiction of concrete past operations. This fiction, however, depends on social conditions outside legal institutions, on a historical configuration in which it is sufficiently plausible to assume that in earlier times, too, legal rules were applied.

Key words: frames, globalization, legal autopoiesis, lex mercatoria.