Luhmann: Law,Justice, and Time

Time is central to Luhmann’s writings on social systems. Social systems, as systems of meaning, operate within three dimensions: factual, social and temporal. Each of these dimensions entails selections of actualities from potentialities (or contingencies) within horizons. Whilst the factual dimension involves selections based on distinguishing ‘this’ from ‘something else’, and the social distinguishes between alter and ego (asking with respect to any meaning whether another experiences it as I do), the temporal dimension operates with the primary distinction of before and after. In the temporal dimension, everything is ‘ordered only according to the when and not to the who/what/where/how of experience and action’ (Luhmann in Social systems. Stanford University Press, Stanford, 1995, p. 78). In this paper, we explore the connection between the temporal dimension of meaning within the legal system and its connection to justice. We begin by setting out succinctly the role played by justice within the legal system, as presented by Luhmann, particularly in his book Law as a social system (2004). From this beginning, we move on to consider the relationship between law, justice and time, taking two examples. The first is the temporality of judicial decisions. The second concerns the relationship between the temporal meaning of law’s own operations, and the presumption of innocence.     

Errata: 'Niklas Luhmann: Law as a Social System'

Erratum . Journal of Law and Society Volume 32 Issue 2
There were two editorial errors in this review by Jiří Přib´ň in Volume 32, Number 2, June 2005: p.325, footnote 1: 'N. Luhman' should read 'N. Luhmann', p.325, footnote 2: 'N.Luhman (ed.)' should read 'G. Teubner (ed.)'.     

Street‐Level Tort Law: The Bureaucratic Justice of Liability Decision‐Making

Most legal scholarship on tort focuses primarily on judicial decisions, but this represents only a limited aspect of tortious liability. The vast majority of decisions concerning tortious liability are made by bureaucrats. Unavoidably then, there are two tiers of justice in tort law. This article focuses on the lower tier – bureaucratic decision‐making – arguing that the justice of bureaucratic decisions on tort should be considered on its own terms and not by judicial standards. We develop the notion of bureaucratic justice, applying a normative framework originally set out in relation to public administration. This enables an evaluation of the strengths and weaknesses of different ways of bureaucratically determining liability claims in tort. The regimes discussed concern the liability of public authorities, but decision makers comprise both state and non‐state actors and the bureaucratic justice framework is, in principle, applicable to understand and evaluate the liability of both public and private actors.     

略论和谐社会中的公平正义与法律

要具体化为处理各种具体矛盾和争执的法律规则,追求社会和谐也必然要求实行法治,法治中的法必须体现正义。为构建社会主义和谐社会必须加强和重视对法的正义性的研究。     

Law‐Linked Justice and Existence‐Linked Justice

Abstract. Justice as a manifestation of “the just” is an evasive concept. On the one hand there is the law, an operation run by professionals. On the other hand there are the citizens the law is meant for. Generally speaking the law strives for justice. But the law has to protect many different interests and must work through legal devices. Therefore the justice that emerges from it is necessarily a legal compromise. For the citizens the legal rules are a given reality. Generally they will agree that the law is there to achieve justice but legal arguments that justify a rule or decision cannot have the same value for them. In cases that affect them personally, justice will be a personal, existential experience, which may be incompatible with legal justice. It is hard to keep these two forms of justice under one roof. In order to make this easier this paper proposes a conceptual split between “law‐linked justice” and “existence‐linked justice.” It is argued that the law cannot in truth to its rational origin ignore the citizens’ experience of justice, out of the ordinary as they may be.     

Introduction: Procedural Justice, Law and Policy

Over the last few years, procedural justice has become one of the most debated fields in social science and law. Modern thinking about law, democracy and public policy inevitably leads to a consideration of appropriate procedures. Images of such procedures are culturally bound and also formed by individual cognition. The word "fair" seems to encompass the most desired features of procedures.     

正义:法律与权利

引论 :正义是人之行为的一种属性我们选用“正当行为规则”一术语来指称那些有助益于自生自发秩序之型构的“目的独立”的规则(ｅｎｄ -ｉｎｄｅｐｅｎｄｅｎｔｒｕｌｅｓ) ,并以此与那些“目的依附”的 (ｅｎｄ -ｄｅｐｅｎｄｅｎｔ)组织规则相对照。前者是内部规则 (ｎｏｍｏｓ) ,而内部规则不仅是“私法社会”〔 1〕 的基础 ,而且也是使开放社会得以形成的基础 ;而后者 ,就其作为法律来说 ,乃是确定政府组织问题的公法。然而 ,我们并不认为 ,所有事实上有可能为人们所遵循的正当行为规则都应当被视作是法律 ,而且我们也不认为 ,每一条构…     

算法正义:一种经由算法的法治

法治必须学会对接人工智能和算法。如何面对经由算法的法治、如何达至算法正义,将成为未来时代法治进化的核心主题。在人工智能时代,算法不再仅仅是一种单纯的数学工具和一般的技术应用,它将成为一种调和法治内在结构与机理的本质性力量,即成为未来法治世界中的隐形运行秩序。算法注入法治、改变正义将是根本性的,对法治的助力和对正义的彰显又具有显著优势。面对这场技术革新,中国法学需要作出理论回应与学术设计,为已经到来的算法法治与算法正义构建理论基础,寻找与算法对接的切口,获得与人工智能保持某种契合的力量,以此形成作用于社会治理的合力,进而完成法治现代化的转型。     

Affirmative Action: Well‐Being,Justice, and Qualifications

A common concern regarding affirmative action is that it sanctions the selection of candidates whose qualifications are not the best overall and that this is inefficient or unjust or both. I argue that this concern is misguided, since there is no independent concern regarding qualifications with respect to the moral status of affirmative action. The only sense in which qualifications are not morally arbitrary—and the only sense in which there is a reason to select the most qualified candidate—is purely instrumental to the promotion of moral values whose fundamental concern is not qualifications.     

资本主义社会、金钱与正义

通过法律调整追求和实现正义是现代法治的基本目标.由于社会结构的多元化和文化的传统,法的理想与社会生活,尤其是法律制度之间也存在冲突与矛盾.本文研究了这种冲突产生原因与解决方法.     

Before the Law: Criminalization,Accusation and Justice

This review essay critically engages three socio-legal books directed to the changing bases of criminalization; namely, Lacey (In search of criminal responsibility: ideas, interests, and institutions, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2017); Farmer (Making the modern criminal law: criminalization and civil order, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2016); and Norrie, Justice and the slaughter bench: essays on law’s broken dialectic, Routledge, New York, 2016). The texts explore how modern (largely English) institutions of criminal law proscribe, assign responsibility and appear through contradictory socio-political ‘constellations’. They variously reference criminal law’s expanding punitiveness as it: embraces revived character-based ways of attributing responsibility via ideas of risk; drifts away from a social function of creating civil order; and, works through a ‘broken dialectic’ that fails to recognize its ethico-political auspices. The ensuing ‘overcriminalization’ is referenced variously, but this review questions a tendency to work off legal lexicons, with consequent limitations placed on the scope of social analysis. Referring to Roman and Cape colonial forms of criminalization, this review highlights processes of accusation that call subjects to account as criminals, thereby signalling an initiating socio-political layer upon which unequal forms of overcriminalization rest.     

Multiculturalism,Institutional Law,and Imaginary Justice

Following Le Pen's relative successin the French presidential vote and the BritishNational Party's historic return in our own2002 local elections, the article considers theprospects for the production of morecommunicative race relations in contemporaryBritain. To this end we reassess the media'streatment of the Stephen Lawrence case andexplore the political logic of the Macphersonreport, the policy document which followed theapparent miscarriage of justice that allowedLawrence's alleged killers to walk free. Interms of our analysis of the media we areconcerned to show how the real of Britain'sordinary racism was hidden behind an ideologyof multiculturalism that scapegoated singularindividuals to cover for the structuralinequalities of wider society. The article aimsto show how the media upheld the notion ofobjective justice that institutional law wasapparently unable to secure.But while the media supported the ideology ofthe law, its exposure of the failings ofinstitutional law also led to calls for legalreform to guarantee the realisation ofinstitutional justice. Although we accept thatthe attempt to achieve legal totality isimpossible, our argument is that the critiqueof legal objectivity, which takes in subjectiverights claims, may present the possibility forthe realisation of a novel, inclusive, model ofrace relations. That is to say that althoughthe media supports the ideology of the law, thefact that this support requires a critique ofpractical law forces the law to modernisearound the idealistic demands of its ownideological structure. Akin toDouzinas,¹ who has argued for theendless expansion of rights as post-modernutopianism, we believe that this process ofmodernisation, which is arranged to maintainthe status quo through minimal reform, is thecondition of possibility of a more inclusivesystem of race relations.