Justice or Legitimacy: A Response to Ocko and Gilmartin
Inevitably, comparative law is a twofold project. We start by comparing first order legal rules: What is and is not a crime? What is protected under a property regime? Then, we are interested in how these legal norms figure in the imagin ation of the social order. Why, we ask, do people obey the law? How do they imagine the authority of law? But what is the relationship between these two kinds of inquiry? Does a private property regime, for example, support a broader understanding of the political order as a system of contractual relation ships among autonomous subjects? Can legal reform?for example, a new constitution?create new citizens, or is it the other way around, with a new conception of citizenship leading to new laws? Inevitably, such relationships move in both directions. Because every legal norm is necessarily embedded in a larger narrative, there are no general lessons to be drawn about the nature of legal and political reform. The best we can do is offer detailed case studies such as that presented by Jonathan Ocko and David Gilmartin. They show us some of the ways in which a regime can use law to construct a meaning or set of meanings that will bind citizen to ruler, or society to state?and vice versa. Still, it is possible to say something about the general shape of the problem of the relationship between these two approaches to a legal order. Most importantly, we can clarify the way the two aspects of the legal order are measured against different normative ideals: justice and legitimacy. A legal system must respond to both of these norms.
Sacred Violence: Torture, Terror, and Sovereignty
The terrorist attacks of 9/11, closely followed by the expose of torture in U.S. detainment camps, dampened hopes for a more peaceful world in the twenty-first century and challenged the belief that humanity was on a course of progress toward rational deliberation, the rule of law, and human rights.In "Sacred Violence", the distinguished political and legal theorist Paul W. Kahn investigates the reasons for the resort to violence characteristic of premodern states. In a startling argument, he contends that law will never offer an adequate account of political violence. Instead, we must turn to political theology, which reveals that torture and terror are, essentially, forms of sacrifice. Kahn forces us to acknowledge what we don't want to see: that we remain deeply committed to a violent politics beyond law. Kahn's provocative argument and conversational style will challenge and engage theorists and lay readers alike.
The Area of Freedom, Security and Justice ten years on: Successes and future challenges under the Stockholm Programme. CEPS Paperbacks. June 2010
This book celebrates the tenth anniversary of the Area of Freedom, Security and Justice (AFSJ) by bringing together the views of key practitioners and policy-makers who have played an outstanding role in thinking about and shaping EU policies on freedom, security and justice. 
 
Ten years ago, the member states transferred competences to the EU for law and policy-making in the fields of immigration, asylum and border controls, and began the transfer process for criminal justice and policing. This decade of European cooperation on AFSJ policies has experienced very dynamic convergence, the enactment of a large body of European law and the setting-up of numerous EU agencies working in these domains. Such dynamism in policy-making has not been without challenges and vulnerabilities, however. As this collective volume shows, the main dilemmas that lie ahead relate to an effective (while more plural) institutional framework under the Treaty of Lisbon, stronger judicial scrutiny through a greater role for national courts and the Court of Justice in Luxembourg, better mechanisms for evaluating and monitoring the implementation of EU AFSJ law and a more solid fundamental rights strategy. The contributions in this volume address the progress achieved so far in these policy areas, identify the challenges for future European cooperation in the AFSJ and put forward possible paths for making more progress in the next generation of the EU’s AFSJ.