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Blecher, Michael --- "Law in Movement: Paradoxontology, Law and Social Movements" [2006] ELECD 69; in Dine, Janet; Fagan, Andrew (eds), "Human Rights and Capitalism" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2006)

Book Title: Human Rights and Capitalism

Editor(s): Dine, Janet; Fagan, Andrew

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781845422684

Section: Chapter 4

Section Title: Law in Movement: Paradoxontology, Law and Social Movements

Author(s): Blecher, Michael

Number of pages: 35

Extract:

4. Law in Movement: Paradoxontology,
law and social movements
Michael Blecher*

`All is possible and nothing can I change' (N. Luhmann)
`Also impossibilities are limited' (R. Wiethölter)
`You don't have no chance, so utilize it" (H. Achternbusch, slogan of social
movements in Germany in the early 1980s)



1. SUMMARY
Law is in paradox movement. It organizes a continuous battle about norma-
tive standards, permanently deconstructing the restrictions of the global social
system on democracy, common welfare and justice. The latter is presented as
the continuous development of the potentials of autonomous personal and
social spheres structured by temporary legal definitions of reciprocity. Accel-
erating the change of legal standards for political and economic organization
means also pushing for the change of law's own procedural and substantive
parameters which were supposed to immunize the social system against
uncontrolled transformations. While doing so, `law in movement' acts `politi-
cally' and in inevitable affinity to the social movements of today which
struggle against social immunization beyond systemic borders and are in
continuous self-transformation. The recognition of this affinity and the recon-
struction of Ihering's `battle for law' as `battle of the movements' are presented
as necessary requisites for the continuation of postmodern critical legal thought.
The chapter presents the consequences of this approach for the (re-)organiza-
tion of the legal system and for legal education.


2. LIMITED IMPOSSIBILITIES
In order to reproduce themselves, individuals and social entities (`psychic and
social systems') use distinctions which define them as ` ...