Paulo Barrozo 200 Stability is a sociological concept. Order is a normative one. Order denotes stability normatively produced and sustained. As a normative concept, order is susceptible to further normative specifications in terms of, e. g. , sacredness or profanity, authenticity or inauthenticity, justice or injustice. Order in simple societies is the result of normative inertia, while order in high-complexity societies is brought about by constant normative change. 5 To understand order in both types of societies is to begin to understand the question of law in time . […] Ultimately, though, legal systems are able to constitute the type of order characterized by social stability as constant normative change only inasmuch as legal actors internalize, act out and act upon a paradigm of lawin a way that smooths out inescapable and irreducible functional-axiological tensions. I say more about paradigms in Subsection 2(C). For now, assume that it is through the operation of paradigms of legal thought that legal systems can be the vessels in which adaptation and aspiration fare a chance of travelling together through time in the form of law . 6 And as the law of high complexity societies unfolds in time, it is only because of paradigms of legal thought that legal systems are able to assume what is often referred to as their autopoietic – significantly self-referential, self-reproducing, and self-validating – and autotelic (formalist) capabilities. The upshot for legal historians is that any kind of legal history fails adequately to account for the viewpoint of legal actors unless it in5 Conservatism and progressivism are clusters of political intuitions, sensibilities, and attitudes intelligible only against a background of social order. That order is a primary social good necessary for the achievement and enjoyment of other goods tends to remain opaque to progressives, while conservatives fail to understand that constant progress is what order requires in high complexity societies. That conservatism and progressivism will remain politically relevant in high complexity societies does not make them less sociologically and normatively immature. 6 Realization of the inescapable, and ultimately irreducible, tension between adaptation and aspiration goes back to Weber and, before him, to Hegel and Hobbes. The 1970’s saw important liberal and critical work on the dialectic of functions and values. See, among several, John Rawls, A Theory or Justice (1971); Duncan Kennedy , Legal Formality (1973); Jurgen Habermas, Legitimation Crisis (1973); Roberto Mangabeira Unger. Knowledge and Politics (1975); and David M. Trubek, Complexity and Contradiction in the Legal Order: Balbus and the Challenge of Critical Social Thought about Law (1977).
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