From legal consciousness to systems theory

Socio-legal scholars have greatly favoured the theory of legal consciousness. Some have advocated for more studies of law in Asian societies to adopt legal consciousness theory. Others argued that such application would be deemed inappropriate and bring adverse effects to socio-legal scholarship. This paper argues that the theoretical design of legal consciousness has three crucial shortcomings, and the revised systems theory can overcome these shortcomings with greater potential to advance the socio-legal scholarship. One, systems theory can overcome the rule of law problem by focusing on discourse rather than law. Two, the ubiquitous law problem can be overcome by the conception of law as communication offered by systems theory. Three, the individual focus problem can be redressed by the intersubjective focus required by systems theory’s theoretical design. It is time to reconsider the revised version of systems theory for the advancement of socio-legal studies.