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"The agony of the law" [2019] ELECD 817; in McIlroy, David (ed), "The End of Law" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2019) 145

Book Title: The End of Law

Editor(s): McIlroy, David

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

Section: Chapter 9

Section Title: The agony of the law

Number of pages: 18

Abstract/Description:

For a variety of reasons, some of them structural, the conventions and norms of a legal system can never capture and domesticate the concept of justice. Justice always exceeds its application in law. The agony of the law is that the tools of the law cannot do justice to justice. Many legal systems fail to deliver the shallow justice they promise. The conceptions of deep justice within a legal system conflict and can be incoherent. Constructing a critique of law from the true justice of a utopia is totalitarian. Confining oneself to an immanent critique fails to recognize when revolutionary change is required. Augustine founded his critique of the Pax Romana in a transcendental true justice which could not be fully instantiated. Critical natural law theory focuses on the victims of injustice, it regards law is imperfectible, but seeks relative movements towards truer justice.