EVOLUTIONARY FORMS OF LAW AND SOCIAL SYSTEMS Pasquale Luigi DI VIGGIANO * ABSTRACT: Modern law is a social system, functionally differentiated as a result of a social evolution, which is embedded in its processes of variation, selection and stabilization, and generated through mechanisms enabled by law itself. Modern positive law, therefore, is based on a decision, and has value by virtue of a decision (that is contingent and changeable). The acquisitions of the social systems theory of Luhmann describe how the stabilization of normative expectations, that is to say the stabilization of uncertainty, establishes the mechanism of production of modern law. KEYWORDS: Expectations, Evolution of the Law, Luhmann, Social Systems, Sociology of Law, Social Theory. JEL CLASSIFICATION: K00, K10. 1. INTRODUCTION In the current sociological reflection, sociology of law assumes a notable relevance while different threads of sociological thinking assign a prominent role to this discipline 1 . During the sixties, the same Parsons stated that, in his opinion, the entire sociology originated from sociology of law 2 . This statement can be understood in different ways: it could mean that the reflection about society finds its centrality in the reflection about law; or it could mean that law is the social system that keeps up the structure of society, in whatever way it’s conceived; or, again, it could mean that in society the law system has the function of order, whose analysis, for the peculiarity that it characterizes, can constitute a relevant indicator for the observation of the entire system of action. * PhD in Scienze Giuridiche. Part of Centro di Studi sul Rischio (CSR) and of the scientific Council of the Laboratory of e-Government (LEG) - Università del Salento, Lecce, ITALY. 1 The tendency of moving the current history of law near juridical sociology (sociology of law) produces positions also distant among them and, nevertheless, in the opinion of who writes doesn’t write from teleological shadings of history. See Mario Losano (by), Storia contemporanea del diritto e sociologia giuridica, Franco Angeli, Milano, 1997. 2 See also Raffaele De Giorgi, L’azione come artefatto storico-evolutivo, in Temi di filosofia del diritto, Pensa Multimedia, Lecce, 2006, p. 109: “Sociology was born as sociology of law. An idea of Parsons that we consider sharable. An idea that finds an easy empirical verification if the character of society’s descriptions that sociology has offered from the middle of the XIX century up to now is observed and if the problem to which these descriptions should find an answer are considered”.