JB Ruhl has an ongoing series of posts on complexity theory and law at Jurisdynamics. Here’s a taste from the latest:
The idea that the legal system involves a lot of actors and evolves along with other social organizations is nothing new. Roscoe Pound famously observed that “the law must be stable, but it cannot stand still.” So what does complexity theory and its fancy lexicon bring to the table? Is it just a metaphor for law, or is a useful model for explaining the legal system’s behavior?
I confess I can’t prove the legal system is a complex adaptive system. I believe it is, but the most any theory of evolutionary behavior for phenomena of this magnitude can hope for us to supply a powerful model for predicting and explaining what is happening. I believe complexity theory supplies that for the legal system, that is more than just a metaphor.