The juridification of education is not only a prominent phenomenon in European education, but it is also widespread outside of Europe, in Asia and the Americas. The fact that ECER organised the first symposium on the juridification of education in 2024 is a testament to the widespread nature of this phenomenon. Many policies that were previously based on the professional judgement of teachers and the discretion of administrations are now prescribed by law and subject to the rule of law.

While the debate on the juridification of education is relatively recent, the legalization of social policy has been a topic of discussion since the 1980s. Previous studies have noted that social policies have become legalised with the rise of the welfare state, and that legalisation brings about changes in society. Habermas emphasised the problem of juridification of society through the concept of ‘colonisation of the living world’, and Teubner highlighted the problem of juridification through the trilemma of law and society, i.e. mutual indifference, social disintegration through law, and legal disintegration through society.

Juridification is not simply the enactment of a single law, but a series of chain actions in which a law is enacted, various administrative acts are carried out based on the law, and the behaviour and thinking of the parties change according to the administrative acts, and can be understood as a process in which a legal system is created. Therefore, in order to better understand the juridification, it is necessary to pay attention to the process of legal system formation.

In this regard, Niklas Luhman's system theory is of interest. Luhman understands society in terms of systems and environments. According to him, system is a social construct that is given meaning through communication. Every system has its own boundaries, and legal systems use a binary code of ‘legal’ and ‘illegal’ to distinguish between the legal system and the environment. In particular, Luhman sees all systems as ‘autopoietisches System’ (self-producing systems). An autopoiesis system is one in which the system itself produces the elements, procedures, structures, identities, etc. necessary to sustain itself.

In order to understand the juridification of education holistically, it is necessary to pay attention to the processes by which legal systems are formed and transformed. By using the concept of ‘legal system’, we can broaden our understanding of the various phenomena that occur in the process of legalisation, and more clearly identify the changes that occur as a result of legalisation.

This presentation is novel and meaningful in that, while there is a large body of literature on the juridification of education, there are few studies that analyse legalisation from the perspective of the legal systems. This presentation analyses the process of legislating school violence in South Korea using Niklas Luhman's concept of legal systems. The research questions of this presentation are

1. How has the legal system of bullying been shaped in South Korea?

2. What are the phenomena within the legal system of school violence in Korea?

3. How is the legal system of school violence in South Korea changing the lives of schools and teachers?

This presentation analyses the legal system for school violence in South Korea. In South Korea, after a student committed suicide due to school violence, a law on school violence was enacted in 2004. After the law was enacted, bullying prevention education was conducted in schools, and a manual on bullying incidents was created and distibuted for schools to use. However, in 2011, another student who had suffered from bullying committed suicide, the government implemented a zero-tolerance policy for bullying, which means that students who commit bullying are punished with various measures, and the measures for the perpetrator are recorded in school records, which puts them at a disadvantage in the university admission process. In addition, the bullying manual has been further elaborated to remove almost all discretion from teachers. Following these measures, lawsuits regarding bullying have increased significantly, and lawyers specialising in bullying cases have begun to appear. This research is a case study of the Korean bullying law system. In order to analyse the formation and change of the bullying law system, the following issues are addressed. First, the major cases of bullying in Korea are collected and the evolution of the social debate surrounding the issues is analyzed. Second, the various issues that emerged during the process of enacting and revising laws on bullying and the debates surrounding them are analyzed. Third, the content structure of school violence manuals and the process of their evolution is analyzed. Fourth, the administrative activities implemented by the Ministry of Education and local education administrative bodies in relation to school violence are analyzed. Fifth, the changes in school violence prevention education and incident resolution processes in schools is analyzed. Sixth, the changes and characteristics of litigation cases related to school violence are analyzed. To approach these questions, the following research methods are utilised. First, the government documents and court decisions on school violence are analyzed. Second, the previous research literature on school violence in Korea is systematically analyzed. Third, the parliamentary minutes and media reports on the process of enacting and amending the school violence law are analyzed. Fourth, two schools are selected and analysed for their bullying prevention education and incident resolution practices. The case studies will be conducted in one elementary school and one middle school that have experienced recent incidents of bullying. The case studies will be conducted between March and July 2025.

The legal system for bullying is shaped by increased reliance on the law. Laws on school violence are increasingly detailed, and school violence manuals are becoming more specific. This has the effect of reducing teacher autonomy and school discretion in addressing bullying. Because the legal system judges all phenomena as ‘legal’ or ‘illegal,’ incidents of bullying are also judged as legal or illegal. The legal system divides those involved in school violence into perpetrators and victims, and offers only two solutions: punishment and non-punishment. This binary approach undermines the educational function of schools. As a result, bullying is resolved through litigation outside of school, with lawyers emerging as the experts. As a result, teachers' professionalism is eroded, and schools are transformed from educational spaces into judicial spaces.

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