Reconsiderations of Legal Agents

With Reference to Public Lawyering, Rational Discourse of Disputants, and Reflexive Legal Regulations

Abstract

The autonomous nature of legal agents has been emphasized from the libertarian perspective in recent years. However, such arguments should be critically reconsidered.
First, the vulnerable parties, such as homeless people, have been increasing due to the de-regulation policy since the 1990s. Public lawyering is indispensable to achieve equal protection of legal agents in such contexts. Second, rational discourse among legal agents, i.e. disputants, is more often than not difficult to attain, even though it is presupposed for the rule of law. For example, child-custody disputes, and the conflicts among condominium owners are such emotional, non-rational cases.
Third, civil law norms conflict with one another. Therefore they cannot be explained away by the pro-liberal, autonomous principles.
Fourth, on the other hand, we are facing the renaissance of legal agents in a different sense in the post-modern risk society. The central legal control has now been considered illusory, because the scientific prediction of long-term causal consequences, especially in the environmental issues, has become critically doubted.
The reflexive, centrifugal legal regulations based on multi-polar legal agents, including various organizations, i.e. legal subsystems, have necessarily emerged in a post-modern, pragmatic sense.