This year marks the 30th anniversary of the publication of Niklas Luhmann's (1927-1998) magnum opus Soziale Systeme. Grundriss einer allgemeinen Theorie [14]. On the occasion, this Special Issue of the International Journal for the Semiotics of Law celebrates the contribution of Luhmann's thinking to our understanding of law, justice, and society. Luhmann's work is wide open for argument. Some consider it the grand unified theory able to completely grasp social reality. Others see nothing but a substantially void conglomeration of analytical constructs and ''behaviouristic'' descriptions joined together with ''pseudo-empirism'' [24, pp. 310, 313] or a hermetic ensemble of ''self-mystifying semantics'' [7, p. 76] supported by sophisticated strategies of pure self-apology. It might seem that the ''giant'' [1] theorist of the social has encouraged such impressions with pretensions which were ''grandiose'' in more than one respect [9, 23]. Indeed, readers who encounter systems theory for the first time may find that an understanding of Luhmann's complex theory is complicated by a string of conceptual and semantic barriers as well as the hurdles of Luhmann's habitually ironic, sometimes authoritative, and sometimes counter intuitive style. An often shared reading experience is, as a German commentator notes, that ''texts appear convincing only after 300-500 pages'' [20, p. 13]. Another finds consolation with the difficulties of reading Luhmann in considering that, given that Luhmann's is a perfectly new theory, no previous experience is needed to access it [21, p. 522]. Possibly because of the combined effects of the difficulties of reading Luhmann and his writings not being widely translated, the reception of his oeuvre in the Englishspeaking world is still localised [4, 22], whereas it has a substantial following in Germany and continental Europe. Nonetheless, the interdisciplinary impact of

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