ABSTRACT

This chapter presents three thumbnail sketches of these mindsets associated with Law 1.0, Law 2.0, and Law 3.0, respectively. For present purposes, one can treat coherentist thinking as being defined by the following five, quintessentially Law 1.0, characteristics. First, for coherentists, what matters all is the integrity and internal consistency of legal doctrine. Second, coherentists are not concerned with the fitness of the law for its regulatory purpose. Third, coherentists approach new technologies by asking how they fit within existing legal categories. Fourth, coherentists believe that legal reasoning should be anchored to guiding general principles of law. Fifth, coherentists assume that the function of private law, together with its guiding principles, is largely concerned with ex post correction and compensation. For coherentists, the focus is on the recognised legal concepts, categories, and classifications, and this is accompanied by a certain reluctance to abandon these concepts, categories, and classifications with a view to contemplating a bespoke response.