Hence the legal system must place restrictions upon itself in its application of the principle of trust, lest it make legal constructions by more appropriate paths untenable. Otherwise there would be a disorderly, undisciplined development of concepts involving superfluous parallel constructs, undifferentiated grounds of argument, and above all, erosion of the division of powers by the judiciary through the protection offered by trust in situations which have come about through violation of the law. … Ultimately, the notion of trust, as total reliance upon other people, lies at the foundation of law, in the same way that, conversely, the modalities of trust can only come about thanks to the risk-mitigation afforded by the law.

DEFINE: Clarifies the reciprocal relationship proposed between legal structures and interpersonal trust as mutually constitutive.

Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, loc. 176