ABSTRACT
There are two lines of enquiry in answering this. One is to trace the development of law as autonomous, to understand the systems effect and the autopoietic ability of legal sub-systems. Another, is to trace how utilitarianism developed under the influence of John Stuart Mill (1962 [1861]) who offered a reconciliation of utilitarianism as a general framework for the rationality of legal engineering, with a liberty or harm principle, whereby strict limits were placed on the scope of the law to interfere with individual activities. Mill moved utilitarianism away from the simple mathematics of units of pleasure, onto the idea of maximising social happiness by extending the ability of the population to follow their individual preferences. This preference utilitarianism would mean that the aim of the society should be to maximise the number of options available to the individual. From this point of view as long as liberty and diversity is being promoted then legal regulation is progressive.
