Some Broad Remarks Concerning the Genesis and Evolution of Legal Concepts

With its origin in the extractive industries, the social license to operate (SLO) has entered the legal domain relatively recently. Nevertheless, despite its infancy, the writings about this concept, including those coming from the legal field, are becoming quite prolific. Given this abundance of contributions, this chapter proposes to look at how the law uses concepts more broadly since all legal doctrine is built on various concepts with different characteristics and different levels of abstraction. Informed by existing literature, this chapter will seek to answer questions such as: What are concepts? How do concepts develop? How do some concepts develop into legal concepts? What is the difference between a legal concept, a legal principle, a legal rule and a legal standard? What types of legal concepts are out there? What type of relationships can form between legal concepts? This broad discussion can, in turn, provide valuable answers to important questions concerning the social license to operate, such as: What is the status of the social license to operate? What is the relationship between the social license to operate and other similar concepts? How is this concept likely to evolve?