Seite - 172 - in Critical Issues in Science, Technology and Society Studies - Conference Proceedings of the 17th STS Conference Graz 2018

truly aware of the nature (the epistemological context) of the information that exists within the scientific sub-system. A more detailed account reveals that these autopoietic discourses are marked by ‘semantic closure’, such that the sub-systems to which they correspond share no substantial, or teleological, rationality: a discourse emanating from a competing subsystem must function as a text congruent with the semantics of the legal sub-system in order to register as a perturbation. Only then will it register as a stimulus capable of triggering a response. These perturbations are perceived as 'noise' within the system environment, which, if too intense, may lead to dysfunctionalities. The criterion for successful translation is therefore to create resonance. Once resonant events in the external environment ‘enter’ the domain of legal communications (by means of simulacra created within the system environment) they are inevitably transformed, or reconstructed, by the legal sub-system in ways that allow for conversion into events recognizable as legal communications. Further, the recursive application of these ‘internally constructed externalities’ allows for the creation or confirmation of rules to govern further reconstructions of similar events.1 As soon as the relationship has been established between law, and events in other systems, the way is open for the relationship to continue and for future events in the social world of a similar nature to automatically give rise to shadowing within the legal system. In the language of autopoietic theory a perturbation in the social environment, which enters the meaning-system of law, creates a structural coupling at the point of perturbation between law and any other systems, both social and psychic, involved in generating the perturbation. From this moment, developments within non-legal systems are coupled to parallel but independent developments in the legal system through linkage institutions that bind law to diverse social discourses. Structural coupling is but one example of a variety of processes that bind law to diverse social discourses. Alternative outcomes are possible, dependant on the interaction of elements and system processes (emergence, interference and interpenetration). These outcomes have been explored in a diverse body of legal research papers dealing with normative subjects such as the identification of ‘syndromes’ and ‘best interests’, the identification of ‘risk’, ‘toxic tort’ litigation, and the concept of ‘reasonableness’. The diverse studies are united in their conclusions: when dealing with expert opinion, the law reconstructs its own (legal) image of the external system within itself, and disagreements between experts must therefore be settled in compliance with law’s conception of expertise. Therefore, in practical terms, any attempt to investigate law’s interactions with expert truth claims from an autopoietic perspective will concern itself with the way in which the legal sub-system filters forensic scientific communications and reconstructs them according to its own logical imperatives. The production of forensic-scientific knowledge claims provides an opportunity to 1 The binary coding true/false, which regulates inputs to the scientific subsystem, is homologous to the scientific/unscientific criterion employed by the US Supreme Court in Daubert v Merrel Dow Pharmaceuticals. It may be seen, in autopoietic terms, as an attempt by the legal sub-system, to resolve internal perturbations through the translation of information from a competing sub-system. While the courts recognise that scientific opinion can be useful in resolving law’s internal problems, nonetheless, it is the ‘system rationality’ of the latter system which defines the normative elements that apply to scientific inputs. The connection, thus made, establishes a ‘structural coupling’ between the legal and scientific sub-systems which is then used control the input of information from the scientific sub-system and to allow for parallel development. 172