Administrative—judgment on the nature of judgment—conflict between Judges in judicial practice—claimant challenges the judicial capacity of respondent —claimant open and fluid in judicial style—respondent certain and authoritative in judicial style—insights from Psi Division on the role of judgment in the universe—whether respondent is a good judge—whether judgment closes down meaning—whether respondent is inhuman—whether judges are inhuman—whether judging is horrific—insight from twentieth century fiction on the place of humans in the universe—horror of HP Lovecraft—suppression of horrific cosmic context within judicial institution—suppression (...) for the good of society. (shrink)

The article takes critiques of the entanglement of law with violence as a point of departure for exploring the possibility of a ‘tertium of law’. It thereby seeks to overcome the dichotomous basic assumptions that see law as always oscillating between an apology for violence on the one hand, and a utopia of reason on the other. The text analyses the possibility of this ‘tertium’, a ‘legal force’ beyond legal violence and legal reason, in four steps, drawing on the work (...) of Jacques Derrida and authors of the first generation of the Frankfurt School, in particular on Theodor Adorno and Walter Benjamin. It argues that in a first step law needs to be dissociated from the State. The violence of law, however, does not stem solely from law’s ties with State power. Law itself is violent even where it is not State law. The second step of legal critique thus needs to consist in the commemoration of legal violence, followed by a third that demands the transformation of violence to force. These three instances of critique are the precondition for a last and essential step according to which a critique of law must facilitate the transcendence of legal violence by taking law and its promise of justice at its word in order to turn this promise against law itself. (shrink)