The law Autopoiesis and environmental law

This chapter starts rather ambitiously. It attempts to describe briefly the autopoietic theory of Niklas Luhmann. Its only consolation is that it does not purport to be either exhaustive, or the only part of the book that attempts the above. Indeed, aspects of the theory are discussed as they come up throughout the text. The purpose of this chapter, therefore, is to offer some preliminary remarks on the basic notions that Luhmann uses in his autopoietic discussions - thereby concentrating more on the post-1980s writings where autopoiesis features as an integrated paradigm in the theory. 1 Because of their abstraction and generality, these notions tend to inform several areas on which Luhmann has written, including law. Thus, the following discussion is structured bearing in mind the potential relevance of the notions both to the legal system and to what follows in the rest of the book. The exposition of Luhmann's autopoiesis finds a more concrete expression in the following section, when contextualised in the sui generis nature of environmental law. Environmental law is presented in rather maverick terms, as a discipline that relativises autopoietic descriptions. Such an observation, however, does not lead away from closure; on the contrary, I delve deeper into it by attempting to reconcile the two. The idiosyncracies of environmental law are interpreted from an autopoietic view, and with this, the first seeds of the present theory are planted: how can an autopoietic system internalise its environment in its absence? The question is particularly relevant to environmental law because of its peculiar connection with the environment - both systemic and as an object of protection. An inclusion in asymmetry is suggested here as internalised absence, which operates as the first manifestation of the form continuum/rupture that runs through the whole argument of the book