The Two Forms of Legal Time: Pierre Legendre’s “La Durée Poignardée”: Remarques sur la Structure et le Temps

Abstract

AbstractIn his Leçons VII (Le désir politique de dieu) Pierre Legendre applies the idea or expression of ‘instituting time’ (‘instituer le temps’), that is, working with time as a malleable material, but at the same time conceptualising time as dogmatic time, especially in the interpretation of law. As an example of this concept he refers to the English Common Law, a ‘style’ of ‘governing by solving cases’. This text will analyse the notion of two times of law—inaugural/mythological and historical—and how it applies to Common Law judgments, as well as to Institutional Writers that are characteristic of Scots Law in particular.