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11 Cardozo L. Rev. 1047 (1989-1990)
The Violence of the Masquerade: Law Dressed up as Justice

handle is hein.journals/cdozo11 and id is 1061 raw text is: THE VIOLENCE OF THE MASQUERADE: LAW DRESSED UP AS JUSTICE Drucilla Cornell * From our childhood, most of us are familiar with the myth, The Emperor's New Clothes. Deconstruction, both by its friends and its foes in legal circles, is understood to rip away law's pretension to be other than politics. Deconstruction, in other words, supposedly ex- poses the nakedness of power struggles and, indeed, of violence mas- queraded as the rule of law. The enemies of deconstruction challenge this exposure as itself an act of violence which leaves in its stead only the right of force and, as a result, levels the moral differences be- tween legal systems and blurs the all-too-real distinctions between dif- ferent kinds of violent acts. At first glance, the title of Jacques Derrida's essay, Force of Law: The 'Mystical Foundations of Au- thority',' seems to confirm this interpretation. It also, in turn, in- forms Dominick LaCapra's subtle and thoughtful commentary,2 which evidences his concern that deconstruction may-in our obvi- ously violent world-succumb to the allure of violence, rather than help us to de-mystify its seductive power. But is Derrida legitimately charged with this interpretation of his text? And if he is, what is the process of legitimation that determines that this interpretation is.justi- fied? More importantly, what is the implicit position on the signifi- cance of right as established, legal norms that deconstruction is accused of going on strike against? This last question becomes ey- tremely important because it is precisely the on strike posture not only before established legal norms, but also in the face of the very idea of legal norms that troubles LaCapra. Undoubtedly, Derrida's engagement with Walter Benjamin's text, The Critique of Violence,3 has been interpreted as further evidence of the inherent danger in up- holding the position that law is always deconstructible. However, it is this position that makes possible the on strike posture toward any * Professor of Law, Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law. This comment is dedicated to Gregory De Freitas, because our many conversations about revolutionary violence have in- formed this comment at every point. I also wish to thank Deborah Garfield and A. Collin Biddle for their insightful comments and editorial work. I Derrida, Force of Law: The Mystical Foundation of Authority, 11 Cardozo L. Rev. 919 (1990). 2 LaCapra. Violence, Justice, and the Force of Law, 11 Cardozo L. Rev. 1065 (1990). 3 W. Benjamin, Critique of Violence, in Reflections, Essays, Aphorisms and Autobio- graphical Writings 277 (P. Dementz ed. 1986). 1047

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