DOI: 10.47743/jss-2025-71-1-1

Abstract: Evolutionary jurisprudence is an approach to law that is starting from the point that law cannot be the creation of one single human mind. On the contrary, its concern is to show law is not forever planned in advance and nevertheless to explain how nothing in the world of law happens arbitrarily. The non-arbitrariness is guaranteed by the fact that law stands in a conditional equilibrium with society (M. Amstutz et al., 2007). This fragile and demanding relationship between law and society depends on society's capacity to evolve (M. Amstutz et al., 2007). Accordingly, legal texts become peculiar creatures that live even more peculiar lives, that extend over much more than the life of their producers. Any encounters with the texts are unique experiences that can never be reproduced in the same way again. Law grows by feeding on outside ideas (E. Donald Elliott, 1985), but, the extent to which ideas borrowed from other disciplines influence law is a subject that lawyers often overlook. This article attempts to fill that gap by considering how, if the openness of law is exploited productively, it is an effective medium for society to be drawn into “legal interpretation”, according to Marc Amstutz's explanatory model.

Keywords: Evolutionary jurisprudence, conditional equilibrium with society, capacity to evolve, laws as living creatures.

References:

Amstutz M. et al., Civil Society Constitutionalism: the Power of Contract Law, Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies: Vol. 14: nr. 2, Art. 3, 2007.

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Kotlo R., Tomić I., Evolutive Interpretation with Reference to Recent European Court of Human Rights Climate Change Case Law, online la adresa: 0039-21382403439K.pdf.

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