ABSTRACT
This collection of critical responses to Empire was first discussed in conversations emerging from panels organized on Empire and on law and globalization at the Law and Society Association Annual Meetings held in Budapest, Hungary, in July of 2001, and at the Critical Legal Conference held at the University of Kent in Canterbury, Great Britain, in early September 2001 (where Antonio Negri took questions via video hookup from Italy). Hence the formation of this collection on Empire crossed the event of September 11. This volume was sent to the publisher between two other events. On the one hand, the French foreign minister, Dominique de Villepin, drew unprecedented applause before the United Nations Security Council on February 14, 2003, when he stated, against the warmongering of the United States, that the “use offeree” against Iraq as part of the U.S. “war on terror” was “not justified at this time.” The foreign minister argued: “[i]n the temple of the United Nations, we are the guardians of an ideal, the guardians of a conscience. This onerous responsibility and immense honor…must lead us to give priority to disarmament through peace.”1 For the New York Times and its report on a statement issued by the fifteen heads of state of the European Union and their commitment to the United Nations as the center of the international order, it appeared that most European leaders differed from their American counterparts through a commitment to “a form of world government” and an “international civil service bureaucracy” with headquarters at the United Nations.2
