Over the past decades, advances in information processing have produced societies of increasing complexity and indeterminacy – at least under some interpretations. Presuming a link between legal systems and the societies of which they are a part, we might presume that increases in social complexity and indeterminacy will also have an impact on legal systems – both on their substantive content and on the structures which provide and maintain this content. Further presuming that legal systems exist to provide a degree of certainty to the structuring of social relations, we arrive at a more concrete question: How can law remain determinate in an increasingly indeterminate world. This panel sets out with the ambitious task of providing some insight in relation to this question, and will consider issues such as:
• How might we understand the idea of indeterminacy?
• What are the pressures placed on legal systems by indeterminacy?
• What are the limitations in the ability of legal systems to respond to these pressures?
• Do we already see paradigms emerging in response to these pressures?
