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Chapter One - The Edge of Law

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 December 2019

Alex Jeffrey
Affiliation:
University of Cambridge
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Summary

This book argues that law is a form of practice that is productive of an edge. This edge is considered from the outset as a spatial phenomenon: a border, volume, limit or plane. The concept of jurisdiction – the territorial limits of legal authority – immediately puts us in mind of the production of a geographical extent to the exercise of law or a legal system. From this starting point, we can begin to see law as a productive force: it does not reflect preexisting spatial arrangements but brings them into the world through its enactment. But the edge of law is suggestive of more than a Euclidean imagination of spatial reach: it is also pointing to the ways in which law creates insiders and outsiders (often troubling the territorial characteristics of jurisdiction), produces specific sites of legal adjudication and presents the production of legal knowledge as a closed system separate from wider social formations. Rather than one boundary-making process, the edge of law becomes three: the designation of spatial limits to law; the constitution of certain sites, bodies and texts as containing legal expertise; and, finally, a set of mechanisms through which law seeks to obscure this boundary-making work. The production and enactment of law is not an exercise in encompassment, but the discursive, material and performative enactment of enclosure.

Type
Chapter
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The Edge of Law
Legal Geographies of a War Crimes Court
, pp. 1 - 24
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2019

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  • The Edge of Law
  • Alex Jeffrey, University of Cambridge
  • Book: The Edge of Law
  • Online publication: 11 December 2019
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108186018.001
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  • The Edge of Law
  • Alex Jeffrey, University of Cambridge
  • Book: The Edge of Law
  • Online publication: 11 December 2019
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108186018.001
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • The Edge of Law
  • Alex Jeffrey, University of Cambridge
  • Book: The Edge of Law
  • Online publication: 11 December 2019
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108186018.001
Available formats
×