Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
Articles 1 - 1 of 1
Full-Text Articles in Law
Self-Organizing Legal Systems: Precedent And Variation In Bankruptcy, Bernard Trujillo
Self-Organizing Legal Systems: Precedent And Variation In Bankruptcy, Bernard Trujillo
Law Faculty Publications
Models of legal ordering are frequently hierarchical. These models do not explain two prominent realities: (1) variation in the content of a legal system, and (2) patterns of non-hierarchical ordering that we observe. As a supplement to hierarchical explanations of legal order, this Article, drawing from physical and social science research on complex systems, offers a self-organizing model. The self-organizing model focuses on variation in the content of legal systems and attempts to explain the relationship between that variation and patterns of ordering. The self-organizing model demonstrates that variation and ordering are not opposite categories, but rather constitute one continuous …