With the emergence and development of the modern welfare state, classical liberal conceptions of the legal norm have been undermined to a great extent. This trend has provoked a heated debate between sociologists, political scientists and legal scholars. Since publication, Max Weber's famous discussion of antiformal tendencies in modern law, in Economy and Society, has defined the terms of the debate over welfare state law. In response to the problems resulting from the law's materialization, G. Teubner proposes a reflexive law model. J. Habermas offers his proceduralist paradigm of law and hopes it will satisfactorially answer the debates between the liberal, social-welfare and reflexive models. This paper hopes to show that Habermas's paradigm proves to be a creative force while raising some questions.