Niklas Luhmann: Law, Justice, Society

Andreas Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos, LLB, LLM, PhD, is a Reader in Law at the University of Westminster. His research includes critical theory, philosophy, environmental law, European law, law and literature, gender studies and law and art. His edited volume Law and the City and his monograph Absent Environments were published by Routledge in 2007.

• Introduction. Society and its Law. Paradox. Law’s Other: Justice. Politics, Science, Economics, Religion and the Law. An Application: Environmental Law. Conclusion

"Can theory be critical without being Critical Theory? To probe this question, Andreas Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos enlists the unlikely suspect Niklas Luhmann. Through detailed aesthetic and philosophical analyses, the author rehabilitates critique as an opening of intellectual distance and dispassionate perspective rather than its more customary role as moral imperative." - Professor William Rasch, Indiana University, Bloomington, author of Niklas Luhmann's Modernity: The Paradoxes of Differentiation"An original approach in thought and style. The discussion on paradox in the context of postmodernity is fascinating and fundamentally useful. The selection of Luhmann’s citations is impressive. The book works though a dense net of insights which condensate and confirm themselves while being written/read. It is a major achievement to reach this consistency at such a high level of abstraction." - Professor Jean Clam, CNRS, author of Droit et société chez Niklas Luhmann"This new book on Luhmann by Andreas Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos is, both for its content and its intellectual self-positioning, an ingenious and very interesting piece of research...the book as a whole is far more adventurous and challenging than its rivals in its interrogation of legal certainties...this is a complex and stimulating book, which certainly deserves a strong recommendation." - Chris Thornhill, Journal of Law and Society, Volume 37 Issue 2, 2010"[Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos] has undoubtedly succeeded in reading Luhmann’s theory in an unorthodox critical, radical and even poetic manner." - Jiri Priban, The Modern Law Review, vol. 73 no. 5 (2010)