Self-Organizing Legal Systems: Precedent and Variation in Bankruptcy

Working with bankruptcy data and institutions, I have portrayed selforganizing structures as overlapping networks of legal and extra-legal actors, and I have explained self-organizing dynamics as processes of form innovation and norm emergence. I have adduced empirical evidence (including a substantial case study and statistical analysis of a quantitative database) to support the proposition that U.S. bankruptcy law is a self-organizing system. Finally, I have suggested that the self-organizing model might provide a more general theory of trial court behavior, and I have offered some preliminary thoughts on how the selforganizing model may illuminate basic research on discretion, doctrine, and legal change.