Law and Intersystemic Communication: Understanding æStructural CouplingÆ

This volume provides an overview of current perspectives on socio-legal studies with particular attention focused on the concept of structural coupling. Part I of the book presents a reconstruction of theoretical tendencies in the field of socio-legal studies, characterised by the emergence of a transnational model of legal system no longer connected to the territorial borders and specific cultural aspects of the single legal orders. The second and third parts of the volume are devoted to the empirical and theoretical analysis of some concrete cases of interrelation between law and society, described in recent social systems theory as "structural couplings".