ABSTRACT
The case study which informs the analysis in this chapter concerns one particular contemporary procedural form of judgment: the ‘interim control order’. Interim control orders were introduced into the procedural repertoire of legal governance in Australia by the Federal government as instruments designed to regiment, organize and track the day-to-day lives of those whose existence could be said to pose a threat to the public with respect to the possibility of a ‘terrorist act’. The validity of the statutory basis for these orders was contested before the High Court of Australia in the case of Thomas v Mowbray.2 In reading the judgment in Thomas v Mowbray, the aim in this chapter is not to provide an exhaustive analysis of the normative constitutional issues raised by that case, but to present a relatively alternative narrative concerning judgment and its textual practices. This analysis aims to highlight a jurisprudential issue that the court finds somewhat difficult to address, that is: What kind of authority does the form of the instrument of ‘control’ carry within the repertoires of judgment or how might one describe the procedural element to the art of completing and authorizing an ‘interim control order’? Deleuze’s work is again drawn upon in this context to implicate the contours of a society for which ‘control’ as a procedure might describe a broader or deeper structure of jurisdictional relations. This analysis presents a theoretical account of how the procedural form or instrument described by the ‘interim control order’ alters the jurisdiction of common law and its practices of judgment.
