ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the process of universal declarations of morality enforced by particular laws. This process draws on universal legitimacy of moral claims of humanity, human rights and cosmopolitanism while constituting the particular rule of law and its enforcement institutions. The idea of meaningful existence anchored in universal humanity and its moral order is confronted by the autopoietic systems theoretical conceptualisation of meaning and critique of normativity as the constituent basis of positive law. The autopoietic systems concept of meaning is therefore used to explain the circularity of absolute and relative validity claims in the system of positive law which paradoxically makes the value-free rule of law a repository and enforcement mechanism of societal values and the constituent value itself. In the opening sections, the chapter discusses the classic tension between moral absolutism and legal relativism, formal legalist responses to the substantive moral claims and their recent criticisms in post-positivist legal theory. It subsequently analyses the difference between philosophical and sociological conceptualisations of meaning and use the autopoietic social systems theory to critically analyse both legal and moral normativist theories of the legal system. It concludes by arguing that universality of moral claims in positive legal norms is a matter of social contingency and not metaphysical necessity.
