Law as an Autonomous Discipline

Abstract

The development of legal studies is colored by the views of legal scholars who are in opposition to one another, namely views that emphasize that law is sui generis, self-sufficient, and immanent rationality as well as the view that law is not independent or can be influenced by other disciplines, such as politics and economics. Based on these differences in views, the problem to be examined is formulated, namely whether the science of law is an autonomous scientific discipline. These problems are examined based on the type of normative research with a conceptual approach. The analysis related to legal autonomy begins with examining the subject matter of jurisprudence which is nothing but an attempt to find out the nature of law or an attempt to answer the question ’what is law?’. Many jurists have provided definitions of law, including Roscoe Pound, Jeremy Bentham, Hans Kelsen, H.L.A. Hart, Ronald Dworkin, and John Finnis. These jurists have something in common in that law is a rule of conduct or has a normative character. Next is described a view that rigidly states that law is autonomous, namely from Ernest J Weinrib with his concept of ’law as immanent rationality’, and a view that does not rigidly state that law is autonomous, namely from Gunther Teubner and Niklas Luhmann with his concept of ’law as an autopoietic system’. The conclusion of this research is that law is autonomous, but not understood in a rigid manner, where law is closed and open at the same time.
 Keywords: law, autonomy, openess