The rule of power in the language of law

Conclusion

Thus power appears as both a “topic” within an already constituted realm of legal analysis, and as one of the motors that drives the constitution of this realm. This second foundational level is only available to reflexive thought that can place its analysis within the world of law it analyses so as to monitor its own possibility-conditions. Power therefore presents itself as shaping the very language employed to articulate it so that the analytic language of legal education can become a resource in its own right. In drawing upon this resource we have found that power and truth are mutually implicated. Contrary to the counter-reflexive and implicit view of legal culture, this means that knowledge of the power/truth relation is also an outcome of this relation. This suggests that power is a positive factor in the determination of any legal meaning and developments within legal disciplines. Through the disowning of legal culture's counter-reflexivity it is possible positively to characterise the character and operation of power across the constituted and constituing levels. At the constituted level it shapes discourse and speakers from the inside as well as externally. At the constituting level — which can no longer be treated separately — it individualises/collectivises those very subjects, their positions and world, and distributes a conceptual and linguistic framework for its self-comprehension.