functions of the legal system are manifested as ensuring the highest
possible level of unity, coherence, and completeness of the law.9
None of the four mentioned formal characteristics of modern law is an
expression of ideologically neutral methods; instead they all represent an
expression of a certain spiritually conditioned societal development. In
the narrow sense, these characteristics are primarily an expression of the
political demand of the modern society seeking to have such a legal form
secured. This corresponds to the values of the modern society and to its
accompanying economic and political structure. to The formal and
material characteristics of modern law are thus mutually dependent; the
former cannot be understood without the latter.
An important factor, which in the development of modern society has
made a significant contribution to the high degree of autonomy of the
law, is the formation of a broad stratum of people engaged professionally
in the law and other specific properties of the law (i.e. legal formalism,
the “monopolistic” nature of legal language.). An old saying from the
time of the reception of Roman law exemplifies the importance of the
personal element: “What a lawyer cannot contemplate does not legally
exist”.l1 This thinking is related to the methodological approach, which
seeks a definition of the law merely by focusing on the subject which
legal experts are dealing with. But this or any other closed definition of
the law may lead to it being comprehended in an entirely self-referential
manner and hence a circulus VltlOSUS. An example of such
comprehension is the autopoietic definition (or theory) of law, which
defines the law as a self-regulatory system capable of self-generation. 12
This view of the law asserts its independence of religious, economic, and
other historical constellations because it acts exclusively in accordance
with the rules that it sets itself.13 The autopoietic definition (or theory) of
law should have a liberating effect for law, but it is instead a distorted
rational comprehension of a certain phenomenon (in this case, the law) in
which a high degree of analytical or discriminating capability of rational
thought is maintained. But, this paralyzes its irrationally conditioned
- For more detail on the four basic characteristics of modem law, see Perenic 1981, pp. 29-
49; 75-85. - Ibid.
II. See Weber (note 32), pp. 492, 493. - The main characteristics of an autopoietic system are: I. the system produces and
reproduces itself in accordance with its own rules, where new elements emerge exclusively through
manipulation of the elements within the system itself; 2. the existence and dynamics of the
autopoietic system are dependent on maintaining its capacity for autopoiesis; 3. no external factors
can cause a change in this system because all changes to the system are exclusively internal and
structurally immanent (for more detail, see, for example, Sumic-Riha, Riha, 1993, pp. 48-57). - See Teubner, 1989, p. 36 ff.
