LEGAL FUTUROLOGY – POTENTIAL OF FORESIGHT RESEARCH IN LEGAL SCIENCES

COULD LEGAL FUTUROLOGY BE TREATED AS AN INDEPENDENT SCIENCE IN JURISPRUDENCE?

Abstract

Forecasting the future in relation to the science of law has not been seriously considered so far. It is not only because the fact that half a century ago futurology was treated as an issue of science fiction. Doubts were raised by the specificity of law as a social science and its susceptibility to cultural factors which are impossible to predict. It was also not very clear what legal futurology was supposed to concern itself with and how to define it. Is it about the area of law in force or about the way of practicing the science of law? The limitations of futurological reflection also result from the fact that the characteristics of the law in force determine the way of conducting jurisprudential research. The former, in turn, as already signaled, operate within a wide spectrum of uncertainty. 

The paper aims to answer the research question to what extent legal futurology, understood as a set of issues oriented towards the analysis of the future of law and legal science, can be cultivated as a sub-discipline within the structure of legal sciences.