After analysing the respective processes used reciprocally by the legal system and the economic system to observe each other and their specific interests in relation to the lex mercatoria, the author tackles certain questions raised by the legal system’s description and representation of itself and its capacity to identify the elements of continuity and of breakage between the lex mercatoria and state law, both in legal science and in jurisprudence and the production of regulations.
As a result of his analysis, the author then suggests the need to undertake the reformulation of human rights and of fundamental rights, as the greatest threats to rights no longer come from states and the political power now, but are more inclined to come from the economic power. His reasoning starts with a review of the conception of fundamental rights as enshrined in Niklas Luhmann’s system theory, which identified the specific function of fundamental rights as the maintenance of the differentiation between the political system and other social systems.