ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses the specific question whether legal concepts merely describe, actively give effect to, or obscure social power. It introduces two key concepts at the intersection between any society's political and legal spheres: power and order. The chapter explains why use of such words is difficult to disentangle when thinking about legal language. It examines how language use may suggest different possible relationships that law can create between power and order. The concepts expressed by the words power and order often interact in discourse about politics and law. Constitutional arguments and decisions are a public process through which law engages with and dispenses political power, while also limiting power according to the principles of a distinct legal order. How law conceptualises the relation between power and order follows from the kind of social organisation in which a legal system is embedded. This is often reflected in the metalanguage used to talk about law.
