Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book aims to bring back law in the history of authoritarianism. It emerges historical unfolding insofar as its central thrust is to problematise the law, by treating it primarily as a discourse that is both historically determined and an active archive of the past. The book deals with moments of rupture within the interpretive paradigms of law and aims to bring a level of orientation that is placed at the limits of the ideological trappings set out by law's inner justifications and grammar. It approaches the theoretical landscape of the interwar, by reflecting on the philosophical and jurisprudential debates informing constitutional praxis and state ideology in Europe at the wake of the Great War. The book addresses explicitly the gap between communist ideological pledges and political praxis within the Romanian context of state communism.