On the 8th of October 2004, Jacques Derrida died. By all accounts, whether sympathetic or unsympathetic to the philosopher, and understanding or not of his work, Derrida had, by the time of his death, gained the status of one of the most influential thinkers of the second half of the 20th century. He combined an essentially philosophical endeavour with an affinity for literary criticism, and a commitment to the venerable French tradition of the public, and, thus, political, intellectual. Unlike Habermasian and post-Habermasian critical theorists, he was not a self-conscious bridge-builder, though his thought nevertheless came to occupy sizeable and highly articulate niches across the world's academies, and most notably in North America, thereby "disseminating" his always quintessentially francophone word far beyond the French and European scene.

Even though he was not a self-declared legal thinker, Derrida professed to a career-long fascination with law, which is duly reflected in many of his intellectual engagements. From such early travails as Violence and Metaphysics, the The Laws of Reflection: Nelson Mandela. In Admiration, or Before the Law to the seminal Force of Law: the "Mythical Foundation of Authority," and such subsequent ruminations as The Other Heading: Reflections on Today's Europe, or Specters of Marx: The State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning, and the New International, Derrida strove to bring to the fore the multifacetted character, not so much of the law, but rather of law as both an epiphenomenon of language, and the necessary, but always violently founded language of politics.

The positional force, the force of positioning is at issue here, where law and language coincide. And as the editors of this special issue we are...