文档介绍：Between Governance and Discipline:
The Law and Michel Foucault*
VICTOR TADROSj
Abstract—This article attempts to re-establish the importance of Foucault's work
for an understanding of the way in which modem law operates. This argument has
two stages. Firstly, there is a critique of the interpretation of Foucault's work by
legal and sociological thinkers. It is argued that by reading the term 'juridical' as
synonymous with the term 'law' in Foucault, people miss the substance of Foucault's
argument. The term juridical describes an arrangement and a representation of
power rather than the law. This is made clear through a critique of J. S. Mill's On
Liberty which is shown to make a juridical distinction between power and a free
space of action which is unsustainable. Secondly, Foucault's genealogy of power
relations is recast from the perspective of a legal theoretician. Foucault's history of
power relations is constructed from historical differences in the mode of operation
of power and discourse. By analysing these differences and their relationship to the
mode of operation of law, an account of the place of modern law in Foucault's
genealogy is established. Modern law operates between Foucault's concepts of
government and discipline. It provides a key way in which government decisions
can adjust the relationships between disciplinary institutions. This introduces the
idea that law begins to operate in the perspective of plete lives of individuals
rather than just to prevent certain actions. Law, then, operates in accordance with
what Foucault calls 'bio-power'.
1. Introduction
A number of scholars whose approach is within the Critical Legal Studies
movement have recently expressed scepticism about Michel Foucault's under-
standing of law. In turn, in this article, I would like to express scepticism about
their understanding of Foucault's work in general and in particular his argument
about the decline of the juridica