Dal funzionalismo strutturale al “nichilismo giuridico”

Anthropological and juridical categories that we adopt to interpret reality have progressively been the subject of a deep change of meaning, determining an era, the contemporary one, difficult to be defined and characterized by a widespread unrootedness. The result is a process of juridical annihilation, expression used by Bruno Romano in order to describe the current normativity as an effect of a previous financial nihilism. In this paper, the systems theory of Niklas Luhmann assumed a key role, especially regarding the Romano’s criticism that denounces the primacy of functioning, instead of function. This is considered the cornerstone of juridical nihilism, that finds its most significant expression in the proceduralism, as Natalino Irti says.