Gunther Teubner
Biographic Data
| ID | 325438 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Gunther Teubner |
| GIVEN NAMES | Gunther |
| FAMILY NAME | Teubner |
| SIGNATURE | TEUBNER G |
| AFFILIATIONS | Goethe University Frankfurt |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-2839-7578 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 65 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 409 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 61 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 4 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1975 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
AI as legal persons
This article advances an explanatory model of the academic and policy debate on artificial intelligence (AI) systems as legal persons over time. It argues that the scientific and regulatory debate on such systems as legal persons undergoes periods of relative stability, interrupted by rapid paradigm shifts. Three interrelated factors primarily influence these oscillations: (1) competing theories of legal personhood (clustered versus singularist);…
My Numerous Detours – Toward Private Law as Society’s Constitution
The author responds in two ways to the contributions in this special issue dealing with aspects of his scholarly work. In his first, more general response, he traces the influences that various institutions and individuals exerted on him and were reflected in his work on private law theory. In retrospect, he understands both his many years abroad and his involvement with extra-legal disciplines, especially systems theory and sociology of law, as …
Digitalverfassung
The 4th edition of the first volume of this work provides an update of the commentary on the preamble and articles 1 to 19 in case law and literature. The structure of the book has been retained and its content supplemented by more recent developments, such as the implications of Europeanisation and digitalisation as well as the Corona pandemic. As of the 4th edition, Frauke Brosius-Gersdorf has taken over the editorship of the commentary.
The Cambridge Handbook on the Material Constitution
Despite a long and venerable tradition, the material constitution almost disappeared from constitutional scholarship after the Second World War. Its marginalisation saw the rise of a normative and legalistic style in constitutional law that neglected the role of social reality and political economy. This collection not only retrieves the history and development of the concept of the material constitution, but it tests its theoretical and practica…
Human–algorithm hybrids as (quasi‐)organizations? On the accountability of digital collective actors
Models of individual accountability for algorithms’ actions fail when a human–algorithm association comes to be viewed as a collective actor. In some situations, human and algorithmic actions are so closely intertwined that there is no longer a linear connection between the emergent collectivity and the complex interactions of humans and algorithms. In such collective decision‐making sequences, individual accountability can no longer be attribute…
Mensch-Algorithmus-Hybride als (Quasi-)Organisationen? Zu Verantwortung und Verantwortlichkeit von digitalen Kollektivakteuren
Modelle individueller Verantwortlichkeit für die Handlungen von Algorithmen versagen dann, wenn eine Mensch-Algorithmus-Assoziation selbst als Handlungseinheit in den Blick gerät. In manchen Situationen sind menschliche und algorithmische Handlungen derart eng miteinander verwoben, dass keine lineare Verbindung zwischen den emergenten Kollektiven und den komplexen Interaktionen der individuellen Handlungseinheiten mehr besteht. In solchen kollekt…
Networked statehood
World economy and world science have not yet found a counterpart in a world state and probably never will. However, the contours of a political system have emerged, which fulfil the functions of statehood at the global level. Such a system does not take the form of a uniform corporative-hierarchical collectivity but of networked statehood, ie a network of individual states, international organisations, and transnational regimes. Relying on social…
Die Verfassung gesellschaftlicher Mehrwerte
Der Artikel bestreitet das Alleinstellungsmerkmal des ökonomischen Profits in fortgeschrittenen kapitalistischen Gesellschaften und stellt die These auf, dass analoge Mehrwertzwänge ebenso im Recht und in anderen sozialen Bereichen wirken und diese auch nicht einfach ein Produkt ökonomischer Prozesse sind. Nicht nur die Ökonomie, sondern auch andere Funktionssysteme, darunter das Recht, zwingen ihre Operationen dazu, einen spezifischen – nun aber…
Substantive and Reflexive Elements in Modern Law
The most comprehensive efforts to develop a new evolutionary approach to law are found in the work of Nonet and Selznick in the United States and Habermas and Luhmann in Germany. While these theorists are concerned with a common problem—the crisis of formal rationality of law—they differ drastically in their accounts of the problem and their vision of the future. This paper tries to resolve these differences by first decomposing and then restruct…
Matrix Reloaded
« Mais où sont les tableaux des noyés ? » I. Le biais de publication : la manipulation des études cliniques dans le réseau pharmaceutique L’affaire « Edronax » : l’antidépresseur Edronax des laboratoires Pfizer, utilisant la molécule réboxétine, fut autorisé en Allemagne et dans d’autres pays de l’Union européenne en 1997, alors qu’une demande d’autorisation était rejetée aux États-Unis. En 2010, le British Medical Journal révéla, ce que confirmè…
An den Grenzen des Rechts
Die Figur des Rechtsmissbrauchs ist eine der schwierigsten Generalklauseln im Recht. Trotz fundamentaler Kritik an ihrer Unbestimmtheit und an ihrer inneren Widersprüchlichkeit wird sie praktisch auf allen Rechtsgebieten immer wieder eingesetzt, um rechtlich unerwünschtes Verhalten zu verhindern. Der folgende Rezensionsaufsatz untersucht, ob und wie eine neue Monographie, die eine einheitliche Konzeption des Rechtsmissbrauchs vorschlägt und zugle…
Transnational Economic Constitutionalism in the Varieties of Capitalism
Among the remarkable results of globalization are economic constitutions, which have emerged independently from the political constitutions of the nation-states. Against ordoliberal as well as critical theorists, who expected a uniform economic world-constitution, a fragmented meta-constitution dealing with massive constitutional conflicts has emerged. Moreover, the conflicting economic constitutions are no longer delineated by the boundaries of …
The Constitution of Non-Monetary Surplus Values
The article rebuts the primacy of economic profit in advanced capitalist societies, and submits that the imperative to extract surplus value governs also the law and other social domains and is not merely a product of economic forces. Not only the economy but also the law and other function systems force each of their operations to generate a specific surplus value – but now explicitly non-monetary – beyond its immediate production of meaning. Th…
Critical theory and legal autopoiesis
This volume collects and revises the key essays of Gunther Teubner, one of the world's leading sociologists of law. Written over the past twenty years, these essays examine the 'dark side' of functional differentiation and the prospects of societal constitutionalism as a possible remedy. Teubner's claim is that critical accounts of law and society require reformulation in the light of the sophisticated diagnoses of late modernity in the writings …
A constitutional moment?
This chapter draws a bow from the self-destructive growth compulsions of social systems, over the moment of near-catastrophe, to new orientations, which cannot be effected from the outside but only through the transformation of their ‘inner constitution’. It makes four main arguments. (1) in order to understand the global financial crisis, we should not rely on factor analysis alone. Instead, we should look for the underlying self-destructive gro…
Digitale Rechtssubjekte?
The 4th edition of the first volume of this work provides an update of the commentary on the preamble and articles 1 to 19 in case law and literature. The structure of the book has been retained and its content supplemented by more recent developments, such as the implications of Europeanisation and digitalisation as well as the Corona pandemic. As of the 4th edition, Frauke Brosius-Gersdorf has taken over the editorship of the commentary.
La question constitutionnelle au-delà de l’État-nation
Google et les autres intermédiaires de l’Internet sont des exemples paradigmatiques de la nouvelle question constitutionnelle que soulèvent les tendances à la globalisation, à la privatisation et à la digitalisation du monde. Au regard des vieilles questions constitutionnelles des xixe et xxe siècles, les problèmes qui se posent aujourd’hui sont certes d’un autre ordre, mais n’en sont pas moins graves pour autant. S’il s’agissait autrefois de lib…
Quod omnes tangit
Critics of global constitutionalism rightly point to a democratic deficit of transnational regimes. They base their critique on a time‐honoured principle of democracy: the identity of authors and affected people is the universal core of democracy. However, in its long winding history, the democratic principle had always been recontextualized. Such a recontextualization of democracy which requires generalization as well as respecification is neede…
Corporate Codes in the Varieties of Capitalism
Globalization has reinforced the conflicts among the varieties of capitalism. The colliding units are not just nation states, but transnational production regimes, which cut through national boundaries. The conflicts lead global corporate codes, which are developed by international organizations, to take different directions when they are concretized on the enterprise level. They will be differently enforced according to whether they are located …
Autocontrainte exogène
Cet article commence par établir une relation entre quatre observations issues de contextes très différents : la jurisprudence autonome gagne une importance nouvelle sur le plan transnational ; un droit naturel réapparaît aujourd’hui face au positivisme juridique ; les mouvements de protestation adressent leurs revendications à de nouveaux destinataires ; et plusieurs systèmes sociaux se constitutionnalisent à des degrés d’intensité différents. L…
Kurzbeitrag
»Vielmehr bietet [der Kommentar] auf höchstem Niveau eine substantielle Auseinandersetzung mit den Hintergründen, den Zusammenhängen, der Theorie und der Praxis des Grundgesetzes. Besseres lässt sich von einem Verfassungskommentar nicht sagen.“ Herbert Günther Staaatsanzeiger für das Land Hessen 2018 (50), 1494–1495
Direito e teoria social
Três desastres da teoria são a razão de a doutrina jurídica que, particularmente na Alemanha no início do século XX, havia desenvolvido uma estreita simbiose de direito e teoria social ter imunizado a si mesma contra a influência desta última. A alternativa para essa autoimunização é uma abordagem distanciada, segundo a qual o direito não toma teorias sociais em seu valor nominal, mas gera, em um complexo processo de tradução, valor agregado à do…
Law and Social Theory
This paper explores the relationship between law and social theory through a discussion of the shifting views over the last century. The conversation is framed by the example of publication bias in private-public partnership networks, and the inability of a single social theory, including theories of morality and economic utility, to explain the situation's complexities. The paper argues that where social theory meets law an added value can be ge…
Constitutional FragmentsSocietal Constitutionalism and Globalization
Over the past few years, a series of political scandals have raised the ‘new constitutional question’. Multinational corporations violated human rights; private intermediaries in the internet threatened freedom of opinion, and recently, with particular impact, the global capital markets unleashed catastrophic risks — all of these pose constitutional problems in the strict sense. It is outside the limits of the nation-state in transnational politi…
La responsabilité à l'épreuve des nouvelles organisations économiques
Le développement récent des organisations en réseaux engendre l’évanescence des « macro-acteurs » que sont les grandes organisations formelles et fait ainsi surgir un nouveau problème de responsabilité sociale des organisations économiques. Pour en sortir, une redéfinition de l’objet « organisation » et de son analyse sont nécessaires. Elle doit permettre de penser les externalités de réseau et d’identifier des modes de traitement — entre autres …
Substantive and Reflexive Elements in Modern Law
The most comprehensive efforts to develop a new evolutionary approach to law are found in the work of Nonet and Selznick in the United States and Habermas and Luhmann in Germany. While these theorists are concerned with a common problem-the crisis of formal rationality of law-they differ drastically in their accounts of the problem and their vision of the future. This paper tries to resolve these differences by first decomposing and then restruct…
Legal Irritants
Legal transplant is an unsatisfactory metaphor for describing the transfer of legal rules from one legal system to another. Instead, the metaphor of legal irritant better describes the impact on the legal system, and then a distinction between tight and loose coupling between law and its social context better explains the trajectory of social effects. The example of the importation of the civil law concept of good faith into British law illustrat…
How the Law Thinks
Twas bryllig, and the slythy toves did gyre and gymble in the wabe: all mimsy were the borogoves; and the mome raths outgrabe.American law professor commenting on Niklas Luhmann, "The Unity of the Legal System"European and American scholars of law and society apparently have problems in communicating with each other. To invoke Lewis Carroll's authority on a piece of legal theory indicates how serious the problems are. After all, traced to its tru…
Rights of Non-humans? Electronic Agents and Animals as New Actors in Politics and Law
Personification of non-humans is best understood as a strategy of dealing with the uncertainty about the identity of the other, which moves the attribution scheme from causation to double contingency and opens the space for presupposing the others' self-referentiality. But there is no compelling reason to restrict the attribution of action exclusively to humans and to social systems, as Luhmann argues. Personifying other non-humans is a social re…
Economics of Gift - Positivity of Justice
Niklas Luhmann and Jacques Derrida start with a common assumption in their analyses of the law and the economy - the foundational paradox of social institutions. But then autopoiesis and deconstruction move into opposite directions. Luhmann pursues the question of how de-paradoxification constructs the immanence of social institutions and builds a world of autopoietic social systems. By contrast, Derrida's thought aims at the transcendence of soc…
Autopoiesis in Law and Society
In this rejoinder, I try to clarify and to develop further the concept of "reflexive law" by expanding its theoretical framework. I make use of the theory of autopoietic systems-a recently developed version of system theory. Legal autonomy and social autonomy turn out to be the crucial concepts. Their reformulation in terms of closed, self-referential, and self-reproductive structures leads to the core problem for a post-interventionist law: Can …
Changing Maps
Superficially at odds with the idea of empirical research, autopoiesis is shown on closer study to demand a fundamental reconsideration of the empirico-theoretical relationship. This idea is developed firstly in the context of a possible methodology and secondly in the application of that methodology to a particular regulatory situ ation. The aim is to arrive at a more adequately complex understanding of the regu latory process - as well as of th…
The Anonymous Matrix
Do fundamental rights obligate not only States, but also private transnational actors? Since violations of fundamental rights stem from the totalising tendencies of partial rationalities, there is no longer any point in seeing the horizontal effect as if rights of private actors have to be weighed up against each other. On one side of the human rights relation is no longer a private actor as the fundamental-rights violator, but the anonymous matr…
The King's Many Bodies
The article connects two strands of the recent sociolegal debate: (1) the empirical discovery of new forms of spontaneous law in the course of globalization, and (2) the emergence of deconstructive theories of law that undermine the law's hierarchy. The article puts forward the thesis that law's hierarchy has successfully resisted all old and new attempts at its deconstruction; it breaks, however, under the pressures of globalization that produce…
The Constitution of Non-Monetary Surplus Values
The article rebuts the primacy of economic profit in advanced capitalist societies, and submits that the imperative to extract surplus value governs also the law and other social domains and is not merely a product of economic forces. Not only the economy but also the law and other function systems force each of their operations to generate a specific surplus value – but now explicitly non-monetary – beyond its immediate production of meaning. Th…
Contracting Worlds
Deutsche Fassung: Vertragswelten: Das Recht in der Fragmentierung von private governance regimes. Rechtshistorisches Journal 17, 1998, 234-265. Italienische Fassung: Mondi contrattuali. Discourse rights nel diritto privato. In: Gunther Teubner, Diritto policontesturale: Prospettive giuridiche della pluralizzazione dei mondi sociali. La città del sole, Neapel 1999, 113-142. Portugiesische Fassung: Mundos contratuais: o direito na fragmentacao de r…
Regulatory Law
Enterprise Corporatism
Digitised version produced by the EUI Library and made available online in 2020
Debate and Dialogue
Breaking Frames
Globalization processes imply the self-deconstruction of the hierarchy of legal norms. Thus, legal pluralism is no longer only an issue for legal sociology, but becomes a challenge for legal practice itself. Traditionally, rule making by 'private regimes' has been subjugated under the hierarchical frame of the national constitution. When this frame breaks, then the new frame of legal institutions can only be heterarchical. The origin of global no…
Breaking Frames
Quod omnes tangit
Critics of global constitutionalism rightly point to a democratic deficit of transnational regimes. They base their critique on a time‐honoured principle of democracy: the identity of authors and affected people is the universal core of democracy. However, in its long winding history, the democratic principle had always been recontextualized. Such a recontextualization of democracy which requires generalization as well as respecification is neede…
Self‐subversive Justice
Dominated by social and legal philosophers, the present debate on justice oscillates between the poles of universality (Rawls, Habermas) and alterity (Levinas, Derrida). The article contrasts them with a third position, a sociological theory of justice in which justice appears as the 'contingency formula' of law (Luhmann). Here, the question of justice is no longer primarily a problem for philosophy but for concrete social practices in the changi…
Justice Under Global Capitalism
Pour une épistémologie constructiviste du droit
L'ouverture du droit à des disciplines voisines, particulièrement à l'économie, à la sociologie et à l'histoire, représente l'un des phénomènes les plus surprenants du droit moderne. Les mouvements law and society et law and économics ont marqué une irruption spectaculaire de l'interdisciplinarité dans la science du droit, en rompant le splendide isolement du formalisme juridique traditionnel. Ceci s'est accompagné d'une transformation progressiv…
Human–algorithm hybrids as (quasi‐)organizations? On the accountability of digital collective actors
Models of individual accountability for algorithms’ actions fail when a human–algorithm association comes to be viewed as a collective actor. In some situations, human and algorithmic actions are so closely intertwined that there is no longer a linear connection between the emergent collectivity and the complex interactions of humans and algorithms. In such collective decision‐making sequences, individual accountability can no longer be attribute…
Law and Social Theory
This paper explores the relationship between law and social theory through a discussion of the shifting views over the last century. The conversation is framed by the example of publication bias in private-public partnership networks, and the inability of a single social theory, including theories of morality and economic utility, to explain the situation's complexities. The paper argues that where social theory meets law an added value can be ge…
La responsabilité à l'épreuve des nouvelles organisations économiques
Le développement récent des organisations en réseaux engendre l’évanescence des « macro-acteurs » que sont les grandes organisations formelles et fait ainsi surgir un nouveau problème de responsabilité sociale des organisations économiques. Pour en sortir, une redéfinition de l’objet « organisation » et de son analyse sont nécessaires. Elle doit permettre de penser les externalités de réseau et d’identifier des modes de traitement — entre autres …
Gegenseitige Vertragsuntreue
Gegenseitige Vertragsuntreue. Rechtsprechung und Dogmatik zum Ausschluß von Rechten nach eigenem Vertragsbruch
Organisationsdemokratie und Verbandsverfassung
Organisationsdemokratie und Verbandsverfassung. Rechtsmodelle für politisch relevante Verbände
Substantive and Reflexive Elements in Modern Law
The most comprehensive efforts to develop a new evolutionary approach to law are found in the work of Nonet and Selznick in the United States and Habermas and Luhmann in Germany. While these theorists are concerned with a common problem-the crisis of formal rationality of law-they differ drastically in their accounts of the problem and their vision of the future. This paper tries to resolve these differences by first decomposing and then restruct…
Autopoiesis in Law and Society
In this rejoinder, I try to clarify and to develop further the concept of "reflexive law" by expanding its theoretical framework. I make use of the theory of autopoietic systems-a recently developed version of system theory. Legal autonomy and social autonomy turn out to be the crucial concepts. Their reformulation in terms of closed, self-referential, and self-reproductive structures leads to the core problem for a post-interventionist law: Can …
The Transformation of Law in the Welfare State
Dilemmas of Law in the Welfare State
Digitised version produced by the EUI Library and made available online in Open Access in 2021 for research or private study purposes
Juridification of Social Spheres
Dilemmas of Law in the Welfare State
Enterprise Corporatism
Digitised version produced by the EUI Library and made available online in 2020
How the Law Thinks
Twas bryllig, and the slythy toves did gyre and gymble in the wabe: all mimsy were the borogoves; and the mome raths outgrabe.American law professor commenting on Niklas Luhmann, "The Unity of the Legal System"European and American scholars of law and society apparently have problems in communicating with each other. To invoke Lewis Carroll's authority on a piece of legal theory indicates how serious the problems are. After all, traced to its tru…
How the Law Thinks
Autopoiesis and Steering
Regulatory Law
Regulating Corporate Groups in Europe
Journal Article Regulating Corporate Groups in Europe Get access Regulating Corporate Groups in Europe. Edited by Sugarman David and Teubner Gunther, European University Florence. Baden-Baden, Germany: Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft, 1990. Pp. 551. Phillip I. Blumberg Phillip I. Blumberg *Dean and Professor of Law and Business, Emeritus, University of Connecticut School of Law. Copyright, The Blumberg Trust, 1993. Search for other works by this author…
Pour une épistémologie constructiviste du droit
L'ouverture du droit à des disciplines voisines, particulièrement à l'économie, à la sociologie et à l'histoire, représente l'un des phénomènes les plus surprenants du droit moderne. Les mouvements law and society et law and économics ont marqué une irruption spectaculaire de l'interdisciplinarité dans la science du droit, en rompant le splendide isolement du formalisme juridique traditionnel. Ceci s'est accompagné d'une transformation progressiv…
Law as an Autopoietic System
And God laughed the new self-referentiality law - a hypercycle blind legal evolution social regulation through reflexive law intersytemic law of conflict unitas multiplex - corporate governance as an example
Altera pars audiatur
Contrairement aux récentes tentatives d'institutionnaliser la rationalité économique dans la pratique juridique, les juristes devraient prendre au sérieux le diagnostic wébérien d'un nouveau « polythéisme » de la modernité. Le droit contemporain est exposé à des conflits non résolubles entre différents discours socialement institutionnalisés, ce qui exclut la souscription du droit à l'une des rationalités en conflit. La pratique et la théorie jur…
Breaking Frames
The King's Many Bodies
The article connects two strands of the recent sociolegal debate: (1) the empirical discovery of new forms of spontaneous law in the course of globalization, and (2) the emergence of deconstructive theories of law that undermine the law's hierarchy. The article puts forward the thesis that law's hierarchy has successfully resisted all old and new attempts at its deconstruction; it breaks, however, under the pressures of globalization that produce…
Changing Maps
Superficially at odds with the idea of empirical research, autopoiesis is shown on closer study to demand a fundamental reconsideration of the empirico-theoretical relationship. This idea is developed firstly in the context of a possible methodology and secondly in the application of that methodology to a particular regulatory situ ation. The aim is to arrive at a more adequately complex understanding of the regu latory process - as well as of th…
Legal Irritants
Legal transplant is an unsatisfactory metaphor for describing the transfer of legal rules from one legal system to another. Instead, the metaphor of legal irritant better describes the impact on the legal system, and then a distinction between tight and loose coupling between law and its social context better explains the trajectory of social effects. The example of the importation of the civil law concept of good faith into British law illustrat…
Contracting Worlds
Deutsche Fassung: Vertragswelten: Das Recht in der Fragmentierung von private governance regimes. Rechtshistorisches Journal 17, 1998, 234-265. Italienische Fassung: Mondi contrattuali. Discourse rights nel diritto privato. In: Gunther Teubner, Diritto policontesturale: Prospettive giuridiche della pluralizzazione dei mondi sociali. La città del sole, Neapel 1999, 113-142. Portugiesische Fassung: Mundos contratuais: o direito na fragmentacao de r…
Les multiples aliénations du droit
Sur la base de l'essai de Niklas Luhmann, l'auteur traite de quelques conséquen-ces de l’autopoïèse en droit, mais déplace le centre de l’auto-référence interne du droit vers les relations externes entre le droit et la société. Il emploie l'idée de « re-entry » de Spencer Brown pour analyser la relation problématique entre le juridique et le non juridique, dévoilant une aliénation multiple du droit par rap-port à ses origines sociales. Il définit…
Economics of Gift - Positivity of Justice
Niklas Luhmann and Jacques Derrida start with a common assumption in their analyses of the law and the economy - the foundational paradox of social institutions. But then autopoiesis and deconstruction move into opposite directions. Luhmann pursues the question of how de-paradoxification constructs the immanence of social institutions and builds a world of autopoietic social systems. By contrast, Derrida's thought aims at the transcendence of soc…
Idiosyncratic Production Regimes
This chapter examines production regimes and their idiosyncracies, with particular reference to the co-evolution of economic and legal institutions in the varieties of capitalism. It first considers two theories that explain the institutional varieties of capitalism, namely, the theory of production regimes and the theory of institutional co-selection. It then looks at the theory of self-organising social systems as well as its critique of the th…
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