Non-conviction-based (NCB) asset forfeiture is a relatively recent addition to law enforcement's armoury in the fight against organised crime in the UK. It allows for criminal assets to be forfeited to the State even in the absence of criminal conviction, the stated objective being to undermine the profit incentive of criminal activity. Until now, NCB asset forfeiture has principally been critiqued from a criminological point of view, specifically concerning the Packer models and the civil/criminal dichotomy – aside from this, however, it remains rather underdeveloped theoretically. This paper addresses this lack of legal theoretical engagement with NCB asset forfeiture by providing an initial contribution from a systems-theoretical perspective. This contribution makes use of systems theory's unique insights to critique the perceived ‘failure of law’ that gave rise to the NCB approach, and challenges the legitimacy of that approach in terms of procedural rights.

This paper uses the last few decades’ developments in the area of shared parenting to explore power within the framework of autopoietic theory. It traces how, prompted by turbulence from the political subsystem, family law has made several unsuccessful attempts to solve the perceived problem of post-separation dual-household parenting. It agrees with Luhmann and Teubner that closed autopoietic systems’ developments are limited by their normative and cognitive frameworks, and also argues that changes which have occurred in family law show that closed social systems do not function in total isolation. It considers power as ego's ability to limit alter's choices. In our functionally differentiated society, with its recent proliferation of communication, power appears more diffuse and impossible to plot into causal one-way relationships.

In this paper we examine the concept of vulnerability as it relates to the materiality of systems, the exclusion of human physical corporeality, and social exclusion in Luhmann's theory of social autopoiesis. We ask whether a concept of vulnerability can be included in autopoiesis in order to better conceptualise social exclusion and the excluded, with a view to understanding how, if at all, the dangers posed by this exclusion are mitigated by autopoietic processes. We are emphatically not returning to the human subject over operational systems, but seek instead to develop an understanding of the embodied nature of humans and their vulnerability within an autopoietic framework. We argue that the awareness of the risks to social functional differentiation posed by unmanaged exclusion – disenchantment, disassociation and, most drastically, dedifferentiation – provided by our analysis indicates why hyper-exclusion must be mitigated.

This paper uses the example of civil disobedience to explore Luhmann's description of the constitution as structural coupling between law and politics. Civil disobedience highlights the paradox of constituent and constituted power. The claims made for constituent power provide a basis for challenging the current configuration and expression of constituted power. This paradox is first avoided in the legal system through that system's inability to recognise a legal right to disobey law. In turn, a political system that has, under conditions of modernity, increasingly second coded power as legality, has an ever decreasing capacity to include communications that acknowledge a right to disobey law. Civil disobedience is only able to operate within the political system in the form of protest, and is accommodated through the exercise of discretionary powers. However, juridification of those powers has the capacity to threaten this accommodation.

The legal requirements of transracial adoption of children in England changed in 2014. An amendment to the law removed a requirement that due consideration be given to the ‘child's religious persuasion, racial origin and ethnic and linguistic background’. This change was motivated by the belief that to do so would increase the number of transracial adoptions and thus decrease the number of children in care awaiting adoption. The likelihood of this change being successful is examined through a combination of critical race theory and systems theory. The combination of these theories permits an investigation into the communications between the political, legal and child welfare systems. This paper offers an enriched evaluation of the interactions of the child welfare, legal and political systems that should be of use to those who work in those systems, as well as providing a basis for understanding why this legal amendment will not achieve its objectives.

This paper analyses sovereignty as part of multiple power operations and the self-referential semantics of positive law and politics regarding the concept of popular sovereignty. The interplay between power structures and the self-description of society as democratic polity with popular sovereignty reflects on the typically modern tension between democracy as a contingent form of government and democracy as an imagined stable form of social totality. Using autopoietic social systems theory, the author reformulates the concept of sovereignty as the specific semantics internally constructed by the functionally differentiated systems of politics and law beyond the image of Leviathan and its socially integrating force, and independently of state organisation and its limitations.

In 2010, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) endorsed long-standing claims of the potentially discriminatory effect of the suspicionless stop and search powers within s.44 of the Terrorism Act 2000. This paper applies principles of social systems theory to propose an explanation for the empirically evidenced racial effect of the s.44 police powers. Through observations regarding communicative barriers apparent between the law-making and policing subsystems, the paper argues that each subsystem's understanding of the expectations of the other, pertaining to the nature and use of the s.44 powers, contributed to their deployment in a way that diminished the effectiveness of the safeguards intended to guard against their misuse. Mismatched subsystem expectations meant that the powers were implemented by the police without the statutory protections, the operational self-restraint, or the type of intelligence-led judgment expected by the legislature, giving rise to misuse of the powers and, in particular, their deployment in line with race-based profiles.

Based on Roberto Saviano's book Gomorra (2006), production of the TV series Gomorra – La serie (2014) was met with scepticism as many feared it would glamorise organised crime and, consequently, attract young people toward Camorra affiliation. The series' bleak portrayal of criminals and criminality was offered as a response to such concerns. Despite the preoccupations, Gomorra – La serie was hugely successful and, because of its quality, was sold to other countries. In Italy, the series' success can be measured by the popularity of its Twitter hashtag #GomorraLaSerie. Engaged with Henry Jenkins' theories of media convergence and based on a corpus of tweets bearing this official hashtag, this article proposes a quantitative analysis and advances conclusions regarding the Italian TV audience and second-screen viewing practices. Additionally, through a qualitative study of Saviano's tweets about the series, it examines the writer's use of the social media platform as a tool of narrative continuity. Finally, the article highlights a few examples of fan-generated media and concludes with remarks regarding Saviano's problematic position at the centre of a transmedia object.

This article examines some of the social implications of Italy's limited purge of the bureaucracy and Fascist political class following the Second World War. Using the postwar personal correspondence of former Fascist government ministers Giuseppe Bottai (1895–1959) and Dino Alfieri (1886–1966), the article analyses the informal networks that promoted the continued influence of these ex-Fascists with high-ranking bureaucrats and other prominent individuals (such as Pope Paul VI and Aldo Moro). Thanks to the long-standing social practice of the raccomandazione, Bottai and Alfieri maintained their Fascist-era connections well into the postwar period, often serving as intermediaries between ‘ordinary Italians' and governmental, political and cultural elites. Although they no longer held political power, these ex-Fascists represented a class of ‘alternative elites' unassociated with the democratic values of the new Republic.

This article explains the process of change in domestic corporate governance. An actor-centred coalitional approach is applied to the Italian case to show how the main features of domestic corporate governance are a product of behavioural patterns (i.e. informal institutions), rather than formal legislation. Leveraging their superior financial means, business elites act as institutional incumbents shaping these informal institutions according to their preferences. It is argued that a change in corporate practices is more likely to be triggered by a socio-economic crisis, which weakens the domestic elite's influence, rather than a legal reform. These findings call into question the excessively formalistic approach of many corporate governance scholars, and are confirmed by the Italian trajectory. After having resisted 20 years of liberalising legal reforms aimed at eroding their power, Italian blockholders are now being forced, as a consequence of the Eurozone sovereign debt crisis, to dismantle their cross-shareholding networks.

Situated on the border between the capitalist West and Communist East, and with the largest Communist party in Western Europe, Italy found itself at the centre of global ideological struggles in the early Cold War years. A number of Italian writers and intellectuals who had joined the PCI (Partito Comunista Italiano) during the Resistance had hoped that the party would play a central role in the post-war reconstruction of Italy and were attracted to the Soviet Union as an example of Communism in action. This article centres on accounts of journeys to the USSR by Sibilla Aleramo, Renata Viganò and Italo Calvino. It will argue that although their writings portray a largely positive vision of the USSR, they should not be dismissed as naive, or worse, disingenuous travellers whose willingness to embrace Soviet-style Communism was based on a wholescale rejection of Western society and its values (see P. Hollander's 1998 [1981] work, Political Pilgrims: Western Intellectuals in Search of the Good Society). Rather, the article shows how their accounts of the USSR shed light on the writers' relationship with the PCI and argues that the views expressed in the travelogues emerge from the writers' personal experiences of war and resistance, a fervent desire to position themselves as anti-Fascist intellectuals, and their concerns regarding the direction that Italian politics was taking at a pivotal moment in the nation's history.