Totems
| Date | 01 December 2003 |
| Author | Peter Fitzpatrick |
| DOI | 10.1177/0964663903012004006 |
| Published date | 01 December 2003 |
| Subject Matter | Other |
DIALOGUE AND DEBATE
The following short paper is a response to the two articles in a Dialogue and
Debate entitled ‘The Grounds of Law’, published in Social & Legal Studies
12(1).
TOTEMS
PETER FITZPATRICK
Birkbeck, University of London, UK
Asuitable touch of the recondite to begin: in prefacing a recent edition
of his Empire of Honour: The Art of Government in the Roman
World, J. E. Lendon noted that the book’s ‘several critics were fairly
evenly divided between those who found the argument preposterous and
those who found it so obviously true that it did not need saying. The author
is delighted, therefore, to refer the former to the reviews of the latter, and the
latter to the former’ (Lendon, 2001: v). That would deal adequately with most
reviews so far of Modernism and the Grounds of Law (Fitzpatrick, 2001). It
would, however, be ungracious and, even worse, impolitic not to be a little
more nuanced than this about the beautiful and elegant reviews offered by
Goodrich and by Norrie (Goodrich, 2003; Norrie, 2003). Yet insofar as
Norrie would find me too wild and Goodrich would find me not wild
enough, to refer one to the other is an obvious temptation. In succumbing to
it, I will have to drain away the element of premature triumph because I want
the alternation not only to be settled but also to remain unsettled. More
pointedly, it is in the necessity yet impossibility of such settlement that law
is iteratively impelled into existence. That is a thought provoked by the
reviews and, by way of engaging with them, it is a thought I will now elabor-
ate on, pretending it was all along the gist of the book.
But how to do this at all adequately? Brevity is at least advisable in
responding to reviews. To protest too much is tiresome for all involved and
deservedly self-defeating. Yet these two reviews are so intense, refined and
diverse that they do call for a response that is carefully attuned and extensive.
An advisable brevity has, however, been made imperative by gentle editorial
direction. What I will try to do, then, is to focus a great many things through
what seem to be my two more egregious sins of omission: the disregard of
SOCIAL &LEGAL STUDIES 0964 6639 (200312) 12:4 Copyright © 2003
SAGE Publications, London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi,
www.sagepublications.com
Vol. 12(4), 547–553; 038615
To continue reading
Request your trial