EXCERPT There are peculiar difficulties associated with any philosophy of law, due in large part to the inevitability that any attempt at a transcendent evaluation of law finds itself enacting a parody of judicial process. Ever since the trial of Socrates (if not already with the fragment of Anaximander), philosophy has affirmed its vocation only insofar as it has fantasised a supreme tribunal: an ultimate court of appeal or ideal form of justice. The vindication of Socratism is inextricable from a retrial, both exculpation and counterlitigation, the forum of which remains the unstable issue of metaphysics…