The Anarchist before the Law: Law without Authority
When might an anarchist need a good lawyer? Why do radical activists committed to revolutionary change often have to work within the limits of the law? Can a judge also be an anarchist? This book is an exploration of a paradoxical, yet necessary, encounter between anarchism and the law. Anarchism offers the most radical critique of the principle of legal authority and, as such, poses essential questions that legal philosophy must respond to regarding political obligation and the legitimacy of coercion. At a time when the law is in a state of crisis, it becomes crucial to interrogate its founding principles and ethical limits. Through an exploration of the anarchist tradition, and engaging with contemporary continental and analytical approaches to questions of jurisprudence, state sovereignty, violence, civil disobedience and human rights, this book develops an original anarchist theory of legal institutionalism and a concept of law without authority and coercion.

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The Anarchist before the Law: Law without Authority
When might an anarchist need a good lawyer? Why do radical activists committed to revolutionary change often have to work within the limits of the law? Can a judge also be an anarchist? This book is an exploration of a paradoxical, yet necessary, encounter between anarchism and the law. Anarchism offers the most radical critique of the principle of legal authority and, as such, poses essential questions that legal philosophy must respond to regarding political obligation and the legitimacy of coercion. At a time when the law is in a state of crisis, it becomes crucial to interrogate its founding principles and ethical limits. Through an exploration of the anarchist tradition, and engaging with contemporary continental and analytical approaches to questions of jurisprudence, state sovereignty, violence, civil disobedience and human rights, this book develops an original anarchist theory of legal institutionalism and a concept of law without authority and coercion.

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The Anarchist before the Law: Law without Authority

The Anarchist before the Law: Law without Authority

The Anarchist before the Law: Law without Authority

The Anarchist before the Law: Law without Authority

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Overview

When might an anarchist need a good lawyer? Why do radical activists committed to revolutionary change often have to work within the limits of the law? Can a judge also be an anarchist? This book is an exploration of a paradoxical, yet necessary, encounter between anarchism and the law. Anarchism offers the most radical critique of the principle of legal authority and, as such, poses essential questions that legal philosophy must respond to regarding political obligation and the legitimacy of coercion. At a time when the law is in a state of crisis, it becomes crucial to interrogate its founding principles and ethical limits. Through an exploration of the anarchist tradition, and engaging with contemporary continental and analytical approaches to questions of jurisprudence, state sovereignty, violence, civil disobedience and human rights, this book develops an original anarchist theory of legal institutionalism and a concept of law without authority and coercion.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781399513197
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
Publication date: 12/31/2025
Series: Encounters in Law & Philosophy
Pages: 280
Product dimensions: 5.43(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.00(d)

About the Author

Saul Newman is Professor in Political Theory at Goldsmiths, University of London. His research is in continental and poststructuralist political and social theory, and contemporary radical politics. He is the author of: From Bakunin to Lacan (2001); Power and Politics in Poststructuralist Thought (2005); Unstable Universalities (2007); Politics Most Unusual (2008); The Politics of Postanarchism (2010); and Max Stirner (2011).

Massimo La Torre is Professor of Philosophy of Law at the University of Catanzaro, Italy, and Visiting Professor of European law at the University of Tallinn, Estonia.

Table of Contents

Preface

Chapter 1 - Classical anarchism and legal authority

Chapter 2 - Anarchism and law: a jurisprudential conundrum

Chapter 3 - The long arc of anarchy: a source of modernity

Chapter 4 - Carl Schmitt and the anarchists

Chapter 5 - Autoimmunity and the problem of legal foundation

Chapter 6 - Still a cold monster? On the dual nature of the state

Chapter 7 - On violence

Chapter 8 - Disobedience

Chapter 9 - Human rights

Conclusion - Law without coercion: on the possibilities of an anarchist legal system

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