ABSTRACT
Amidst the great stir caused across a wide range of intellectual inquiry by the writings of Michel Foucault surprisingly little attention has been paid to the implications of his work for an understanding of the role of law in modern society. This conception of “right” is rooted in notions of the divine right of kings and in an imperative conception of law; the king’s right is his right to command. Foucault’s account of the decline of law does not involve a thesis that suggests that law might wither away. The more persuasive response to Foucault’s account of law in late modernity suggests that the trajectory of law is far more complex. At the heart of Foucault’s expulsion of law lies his concern, manifest in all his interventions about power, to identify the emergence of distinctively new forms of power that characterize modernity.
