However, trust and law can remain closely congruent with one another only in very simple social systems, those which have barely any structural problems, and are small enough for all members to be familiar with one another. In such systems trust is expected and distrust becomes an affront, an offence against the rules of collective life and thus against the laws of the system, and vice versa, any breach of trust claimed and proven is sanctioned as wrongdoing. Under such circumstances anyone who distrusts cannot give expression to his feelings and fears without becoming a social isolate. As a consequence, the basic laws of the system steer him in the direction of a socially typified trust.

Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, loc. 173