The Representation of the Sacred and the Insufficient Functional Differentiation of the Legal System in Brazil

Abstract

This paper is concerned with questioning three representations of the sacred in highly symbolic places for the (re)construction of Brazil’s legal system. The purpose of this paper is to examine the social structures which resulted in the co-evolution of legal and religious systems, at different times, in central and peripheral countries, analyzing it from the point of view of Niklas Luhmann’s theory of autopoietic social systems. The stage of differentiation of both these systems would be clearly seen by observing the sacred that inhibits the necessary legal autopoiesis in the periphery of the global social system.