ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the 'subversive moment' in law, the moment at which judgment becomes unique, becomes creative, in which boundaries are broken although they are inevitably reinstated when judgment has been handed down. He (or she) might retreat to a mechanical formalism, treating principles such as fidelity to law and adherence to precedent as absolutes. The subversive moment is the only moment at which judgment truly 'belongs to' the judge. If the subversive moment is always a possibility, if with every 'fresh' decision the judge must choose, it may appear that to be before the law is simply to be before an individual. Once choice and will are assimilated to capriciousness so that responsibility for the content of a decision is isolated from responsibility for its form, the decision maker is also isolated from personal responsibility for the decisions which must be made.
