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Complexity Theory & Socio-Legal Studies

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Abstract

The complexity theory paradigm is in the process of being taken up from the natural sciences into the social sciences and humanities. This article introduces complexity theory as a theoretical framework for socio-legal study. Complexity theory is analysed as being developed in non-organic, organic and social registers, and as exhibiting a specific image of thought. The complexity theory of the non-organic register is introduced in terms of Prigogine’s work on order out of chaos and dissipative structures. The complexity theory of the organic register is introduced in terms of Kauffman’s work on edge of chaos self-organisation in morphogenesis and co-evolution. Finally, the complexity theory of the social register is addressed in terms of assemblage theory. Specifically addressing the level of social organisation and the role of law, the work of J.B. Ruhl is considered as the first working through of the implications of complexity theory for socio-legal scholarship. The article goes on to argue that the key starting points of a complexity paradigm for socio-legal study are: an ontogenetic image of thought; complex dynamic dissipative structures and assemblages in phase space; the socio-legal as complex adaptive assemblages in co-evolution with their broader environment; and commitment to emergence and self-organisation at the edge of chaos. In particular, it proposes that the complexity theory of law allows for the search for lost, hidden, local, bottom-up, emergent modes of legality, and for a new conceptual creativity in socio-legal work. The complexity theory theoretical framework is of particular interest and challenge to scholars working in the social sciences with Maturana & Varela based autopoetic systems theory.

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Notes

  1. Generally on complexity theory, see: Prigogine and Stengers (1984), Prigogine (1980, 1997), Nicolis and Prigogine (1989), Kauffman (1993), Cohen and Stewart (1994), Casti (1994), Coveney and Highfield (1995), Capra (1996), Holland (1998), Wolfram and Stephen (2002), DeLanda (2004).

  2. See Ansell Pearson (1999), Capra (1996), Cowan et al. (1994), Coveney and Highfield (1995), Kauffman (1993, 1995).

  3. For a philosophical take on complexity theory and organic evolution, see Ansell Pearson (1999). The account of complexity theory being given here stresses the forces of non-organic creativity as running distinctively and decisively through organic complexity. For an account of complexity theory that collapses molecular evolution within the closure of organismic holism, see Capra (1996) and in discussions of complexity theory dominantly influenced by Maturana and Varela (1980).

  4. The common underlying theme linking nature’s complexity with computation depends on the emergence of complex organised behaviour from the many simpler co-operative and competing interactions between the microscopic components concerned, whether they are atoms, bits of logic, or spinning electrons (Coveney and Highfield 1995, p. 89).

  5. Systems poised on the boundary between order and chaos are those ones best able to adapt by mutation and selection (Kauffman 1995, p. 131).

  6. I am pulling out Ruhl’s work as exemplary of the meeting of complexity theory and socio-legal study, however there has been very significant work by Milovanovic of the entry of chaos theory and some aspects of complexity theory into criminology and the sociology of law. Key books among the many articles include: Milovanavic (1992, 1997), Henry and Milovanovic (1996).

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Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank the anonymous referees for their helpful comments and suggestions. He would also like to thank Anna Carline and Helen Baker for organising a session on complexity theory and socio-legal studies.

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  1. School of Law, Liverpool John Moores University, John Foster Building, 98 Mount Pleasant, Liverpool, L3 5UZ, UK

    Jamie Murray

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Correspondence to Jamie Murray.

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Murray, J. Complexity Theory & Socio-Legal Studies. Liverpool Law Rev 29, 227–246 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10991-008-9042-9

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