Derrida’s Legal Times

The aim of this essay is to suggest what Jacques Derrida’s late forays into law and politics might contribute to thinking in legal theory beyond what can be derived from Michel Foucault and his inheritors. The key differences pertain to time and timing. In particular, Derrida’s writings lead us to reconsider the timing of the relation between the subject and the law, whether that subject is declaring independence or awaiting death. Through the vector of time, the trace of the subject—not self-present or autonomous but a subject nonetheless—is recovered within the juridico-political sphere.