摘要: The key argument put forward by the trio of Malcolm Feeley, Terrence Halliday, and Lucien Karpik (FHK) is that what they term the legal complex, that is, broadly speaking, the legal profession and its institutions, tends to further political liberalism. They understand the legal complex as “the system of relations among legally-trained occupations which mobilise on a particular issue as the ‘legal complex’”(Halliday, Karpik, and Feeley 2007: 6–7). The analytical core interest is thus to explore how this complex of legal professionals mobilizes and when it seeks to further political liberalism (ibid: 7). The interest of this chapter is to test this thesis against the case of Denmark, a country that—as many other Nordic countries—has transformed into a complex welfare state society that is governed by law but with a clear objective of attaining social justice. The latter is characterized by a strong notion of redistributive economic justice. This configuration of legal and economic rationalities is of key importance for understanding the both limited and extensive role the legal complex has played in Danish political history and culture. In the nineteenth century, a host of actors entered the political arena, seeking to challenge the status quo by pursuing forms of political liberalism. Legal professionals generally gained from these changes and consolidated themselves as the core administrative elite. They played a double role with regard to politics, and they were found in both the progressive and reactionary movements. Although legal rationality became a cornerstone of the welfare society, and thereby has made jurists highly central to the administration of the modern …