engleski

Legal Systems as Abstract Institutional Artifacts

The essay claims that legal systems are abstract institutional artifacts and that as such they existentially or ontologically depend on collective intentionality in the form of (a we- mode) collective recognition. It argues that this recognition, as a social practice accompanied with its participants’ particular attitude towards it, constitutes a social norm by which a group of people collectively imposes an institutional status of officials or make it the case that an institutional status of legal system exists. It further claims that legal systems often emerge gradually from standing rudimentary pre-legal practices which may be said to create the context in which social norms of recognition can emerge. Finally, it argues that the actual existence of a legal system depends on whether or not the content of collective recognition was largely successfully realized, which is manifested precisely in people actually using a legal system, i.e., in their social (legal) practices.

legal system, citizens, officials, collective recognition, social norm, social validation, artifact, institutional artifact

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