Private Law As a Complex System - Agendas for the Twenty-First Century

Abstract

This chapter provides a critical overview of the very wide range of challenges facing private law in the twenty-first century, ranging as they do from problems of education, technology, philosophical foundation, procedure and methodology to those of incoherence and unintelligibility produced by the proliferation of rules from sources that are increasingly diverse, and fragmented. It speculates upon the major challenges of modern system complexity and calls for more coordinated, reflexive thinking as between judges, legislators, policy-makers and the legal academy to make our private system of justice as robust, usable and morally attractive as it can be.

Keywords: private law, reform, complexity, complex, statutes, civil litigation