1 Is the Legal System a System?

2 Why Do Judges Talk the Way they Do?

Social Systems, Psychic Systems and Redundancy

Judicial Communications and ‘Commitment’ to the Legal System

Judicial Discretion

Conclusion

3 Can One Have a Right to Disobey a Law?

Civil Disobedience within the Legal System

Civil Disobedience within the Political System

Social Movements and Civil Disobedience

Civil Disobedience within the Legal and Political Systems -A Case Study （Debbie Purdy’s Case）

Conclusion

4 Understanding Legal Pluralism

Brian Tamanaha’s Criticisms of Systems Theory

How Does One Identify a Subsystem Code?

Law and Violence

Normative Pluralism

Pluralism and Translation

Exploring Legal Pluralism in Modern and Pre-modern Societies

Conclusion

5 How Law Constructs Time

Time, Law and Politics

A Simple Example: The Presumption of Innocence

A Complex Example

6 Politics and Law: The Rule of Law, Constitutional Law, and Human Rights

The Rule of Law

Constitutional Law

Constitutional and Human Rights, and Societal Constitutionalism

7 Control through Law

Steering through Constituting Rules

Observing Reflexive Law

Structural Coupling Dynamics

8 Appeals in Law

Appeals and Doctrine

The Structural Coupling between Law and the Media through Conviction

Implications of Criminal Appeals for the Structural Coupling between Law and the Media

The Pressures Generated by the Differences between the Media and the Legal System’s Understanding of Appeal

Postscript: A Comment on Human Involvement

Bibliography

Index