In this rejoinder, I try to clanfy and to develop further the concept of by expandmg its theoretical framework. I make use of the theory of autopoietic systems-a recently developed version of system theory. Legal autonomy and social autonomy turn out to be the crucial concepts. Their reformulation In terms of closed, selfreferential, and seIf-reproductive structures leads to the core problem for a post-interventionist law: Can the law adapt its internal modeIs of soclal reality to the autopoietic organization of legally regulated social systems? When two German professors, one a private lawyer and the other an empirical sociologist, dispute the socio-legal implications of the Third German Werturteilsstreit. a considerable amount of conceptual confusion is to be expected, If, in addition, they attempt to express their Teutonic argument in the English language and present their discussion to a largely American audience, concepts will be more confused. There is indeed confusion since Professor Blankenburg and I employ different shades of meaning in our discussion of such heavily loaded concepts as legal system, legal autonomy, evolution of law, legal formalism, and crisis of regulatory law. There are so many differences to be bridged--differences of discipline, knowledge, language, normative orientation, and cultural background-that an attempt to clarify the confusion point by point, concept by concept, seems not very promising. Thus, I would prefer to reconstruct my argument as a whole in a different theoretical context. I would like to reformulate the concept of reflexive law in the language of a somewhat obscure theory-the theory of autopoietic systems. I will use this theory, which, as we shall see, is a special kind of theory of self-referentiality, in order not only to clarify some misunderstandings in Blankenburg's critique but to develop further the argument as a whole. At the same time it seems inevitable that I myself will add to the conceptual confusion.