Being Just With Deconstruction

Abstract

For several years now I have been concerned with the problem of how one should apply the insights of deconstructive practice to questions of law and justice. This question is far from easy, although many people (in American legal theory, in particular) have simply assumed that deconstruction could readily be adapted to political questions and, in particular, to the political agenda of the left. The problem, however, is that deconstructive techniques do not seem to support any particular vision of justice; indeed they appear to preclude the possibility of any stable conception of the just or the good that could provide the basis for political belief or the authority for political action.