The purpose of this article is the critical reconstitution of the contemporary debate on two of the most preeminent perspectives in the Sociology of Law: "rationalist historicism", deriving from Max Weber's studies, and systemic theory as developed by Niklas Luhmann with its reflexive variation in Gunther Teubner. These two schools of sociology express different perspectives for our understanding of the ties between juridical phenomena and social relations; in spite of their Germanic origins, they have influenced a wide number of thinkers in England and the U.S. On the one hand, the Weberian perspective, which has inspired an infinite number of empiricist currents, maintains an enormous intellectual hold on Anglo-American sociology, committed to the systematization of information collected from primary, historic and documentary sources; on the other hand, there is the combination of Luhmann's systemic theory and the concept of "autopoiesis" taken from Biology, which attempts a vigorous interpretation of the Sociology of Law which quite ingeniously reconstructs the objects of Law and Sociology to explain the nature of social and juridical phenomena. In our attempt to discuss the theoretical models that pertain to these perspectives and test their limits and potential for explaining contemporary problems related to Law and society, we make the connections between the general assertions of these theories and the general assumptions that their respective epistemologies present.
Sociology of Law; rationalist historicism; systemic theory
