Abstract

This year marks the 30th anniversary of the publication of Niklas Luhmann’s (1927–1998) magnum opus Soziale Systeme. Grundriss einer allgemeinen Theorie [14]. On the occasion, this Special Issue of the International Journal for the Semiotics of Law celebrates the contribution of Luhmann’s thinking to our understanding of law, justice, and society.Luhmann’s work is wide open for argument. Some consider it the grand unified theory able to completely grasp social reality. Others see nothing but a substantially void conglomeration of analytical constructs and “behaviouristic” descriptions joined together with “pseudo-empirism” [24, pp. 310, 313] or a hermetic ensemble of “self-mystifying semantics” [7, p. 76] supported by sophisticated strategies of pure self-apology. It might seem that the “giant” [1] theorist of the social has encouraged such impressions with pretensions which were “grandiose” in more than one respect [9, 23]. Indeed, readers who encounter systems theory for the first ti