The questions of violence, justice and judgment define one of the most resonant and constant concerns of contemporary thought. In part, this is only a reflection of what are often called the .realities on the ground. (the in-tonation is, of course, that to pursue these questions as questions is al-ready to be .in the air. or .in the clouds.). In the few years of this century the logic of violence, and even its aestheticisation . whether as terror or as .shock and awe,. or in the citizen.s daily vocation to be .alert but not alarmed. . have become the familiar data of current experience. They are a kind of weather, felt through the colour-coded threat scale of the Homeland Security Advisory System, or in the casual references to the .current cli-mate.. In view of these realities, and of an acclimatisation to them that in-forms general popular support for extensions of executive power and legis-lative activity, the urgency of the turn or return to questions of force and law is to be expected. In the fabric of recent debate, they are seams at whichûi€