This collection introduces the reader to the ways that scholars are using complexity
theory to make sense of law. Complexity presents a more productive language
for legal theory and a revolutionary way of addressing the problems of descriptive,
normative and critical jurisprudence as well as understanding the interconnected
operations of law and other social activities. Complexity theory developed
in the natural sciences as a way of explaining the ways in which order could arise
without the need for a guiding hand or central controller. In a complex system,
the structure emerges spontaneously as the result of the interactions of the component
elements in the system as they encounter new information. Complexity
theory has been used, inter alia, to explain the workings of insect colonies and
the relationship between the mind and the brain (Waldrop, 1994, p. 145). It has
also been relied on by certain social scientists (for example, Geyer and Rihani,
2010; Sawyer, 2005; Urry, 2003; Walby, 2007), and there is now a significant,
albeit disparate, body of scholarly writing that seeks to apply the insights from
complexity theory to law (for example, Hathaway, 2001; Murray, 2006, 2008;
Ruhl, 1996a, 1996b, 1997, 2008; Vermeule, 2012; Webb, 2013, 2014, 2015;
Webb, 2005; Wheatley, 2016).