¹ As a method of communicating ideas in legal theory, the conversational format has been used before by legal scholars in legal journals. For articles written in a conversational format, see Peter Gabel and Duncan Kennedy, Roll Over Beethoven, 36 Stan. L. Rev. 1 (1984); Ellen C. DuBois, Mary C. Dunlap, Carol J. Gilligan, Catherine A. MacKinnon and Carrie J. Menkel-Meadow, Feminist Discourse, Moral Value, and the Law – A Conversation, 34 Buffalo Law Review 11 (1985).Google Scholar

² Gilles Deleuze and Claire Parnet, Dialogues (1977).Google Scholar

³ Id. at 1.Google Scholar

⁴ Id.Google Scholar

⁵ Throughout the text, we use the words “post-structuralist” and “semiotic” interchangeably.Google Scholar

⁶ Generally, and among many others, Guyora Binder and Robert Weisberg, Literary Criticisms of Law, (2000); Dan Danielsen and Karen Engle, After Identity: A Reader in Law and Culture (1995); Feminist Legal Theory: Readings in Law and Gender (New Perspectives on Law, Culture, and Society) (Katherine Bartlett and Roseanne Kennedy eds., 1991). Others are: Jack Balkin, Deconstructive Practice and Legal Theory, 96 Yale Law Journal 743 (1987); Jack Balkin, The Crystalline Structure of Legal Thought, Ed Morgan, Act of Blindness, State of Insight, 13 Boston University International Law Journal 1 (1995); Ed Morgan, The Other Death of International Law, 14 Leiden Journal of International Law 3 (2001); Clare Dalton, An Essay on the Deconstruction of Contract Doctrines, 94 Yale Law Journal 997 (1985); Stanley Fish, Working on the Chain Gang: Interpretation in the Law and in Literary Theory, 9 Critical Inquiry 201 (1982-1983); Duncan Kennedy, The Semiotics of Legal Argument, 42 Syracuse Law Review 75 (1991); Christine Desan, Expanding Legal Vocabulary: The Deconstruction and Defense of Law, 95 Yale Law Journal 969 (1986); Robert Cover, Violence and the Word, 95 Yale Law Journal 1601 (1985); Mary J. Coombs, Outsider Scholarship: The Law Review Stories, 63 University of Colorado Law Review 683 (1992); Kimberly Crenshaw, Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence Against Woman of Color, 43 Stanford Law Review 6 (1991); and the list could go on and on… Some people have cited David Kennedy, International Legal Structures (1987) and Martti Koskenniemi, From Apology to Utopia: the Structure of International Legal Argument (1989) as example of deconstructive practices. The tendency and difficulty of placing certain authors at either side of the structuralist – post-structuralist divide will remain a recurring issue, and not merely in this conversation.Google Scholar

⁷ Halley, Janet, Taking A Break from Feminism?, in Gender and Human Rights ch. 3 (Karen Knop ed., 2004)Google Scholar

⁸ Kennedy, Duncan, A Semiotics of Critique, 22 Cord. L. Rev. 1147 (2001).Google Scholar

⁹ Basak Cali is a dear friend who is often present in our conversations.Google Scholar

¹⁰ Kennedy, David, When Renewal Repeats: Thinking Against the Box, 32 N. Y. U. J. Int'l L. & Pol. 335 (2000). Other related significant works by David Kennedy include David Kennedy, The Move to Institutions, 8 Carodozo L. Rev. 841 (1987); David Kennedy, A New World Order: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow, 4 Transnat'l L. Contemp. Probs. 329 (1994); David Kennedy, The International Style in Postwar in Law and Policy, 1994 Utah L. Rev. 7 (1994); David Kennedy, The Disciplines of International Law and Policy, 12 Leiden J. Int'l L. 9 (1999); David Kennedy, Receiving International Law, 10 Conn. J. Int'l Law 347 (1994); David Kennedy, Primitive Legal Scholarship, 27 Harv. Int'l L. J. (1986); David Kennedy, International Law in the Nineteenth Century, 17 Quinnipiac L. Rev. 99 (1999).Google Scholar

¹¹ Kennedy, David, The International Human Rights Movement: Part of the Problem?, 15 Harv. Hum. Rts. J. 101 (2002). See David Kennedy, The Dark Sides of Virtue: Reassessing International Humanitarianism (2004); David Kennedy, International Refugee Protection, 8 Hum. Rts. Q. 1 (1986). For another elaborate work that critiques human rights, see Costas Douzinas, The End of Human Rights (2000).Google Scholar

¹² This is to point out that although within quotations, these words were pronounced by Hassan.Google Scholar

¹³ This is to point out that although within quotations, these words were pronounced by Hassan.Google Scholar

¹⁴ See Jacques Derrida, … That Dangerous Supplement …, in Of Grammatology 141 (Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak trans., 1974); Jacques Derrida, Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourses of the Human Sciences, in Writing and Difference 278 (Alan Bass trans., 1978).Google Scholar

¹⁵ See Roberto Unger, The Critical Legal Studies Movement, 96 Harv. L. Rev. 561 (1983).Google Scholar

¹⁶ See Peter Gabel, A Critique of Rights: The Phenomenology of Rights-Consciousness and the Pact of the Withdrawn Selves, 62 Tex. L. Rev. 1563 (1984).Google Scholar

¹⁷ Kennedy, Duncan, The Stages of the Decline of the Private Public Distinction, 130 U. Pa. L. Rev. 1349 (1982).Google Scholar

¹⁸ See Dalton, Clare, An Essay on the Deconstruction of Contract Doctrines, 94 Yale Law Journal 997 (1985).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹⁹ From Albert Camus’ Myth of Sisyphus, which consists of a story of a man that continuously carries a boulder up the hill even after it falls. Albert Camus uses this as a metaphor to explain the human condition wherein a person continues to struggle, although nothing is changed, and meaninglessness and absurdity pervades. See Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus and other Essays (1955).Google Scholar

²⁰ See Plato, Gorgias (Donald J. Zeyl trans., 1987); Plato, Republic 1-32 (G.M.A. Grube trans., 1992).Google Scholar

²¹ See Jürgen Habermas, Legitimation Crisis (Thomas McCarthy trans., 1975); J. Habermas, Communication and the Evolution of Society (1979).Google Scholar

²² See Habermas, Jürgen, Private and Public Autonomy, Human Rights, and Popular Sovereignty, in The Politics of Human Rights 50 (Brad Saric ed., 1999).Google Scholar

²³ See Derrida, Jacques, Force of Law: The Mystical Foundation of Authority, 11 Card. L. Rev. 919 (1990).Google Scholar

²⁴ Richard Falk and Andrew Strauss, On the Creation of a Global Peoples Assembly: Legitimacy and the Power of Popular Sovereignty, 36 Stanford Journal of International Law 191 (2000).Google Scholar

²⁵ See Weber, Max, Politics as a Vocation, in From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology 77 (H.H. Gerth & C. Wright Mills eds., 1946); Harvey Goldman, Politics, Death, and the Devil: Self and Power in Max Weber and Thomas Mann (1992).Google Scholar

²⁶ See Schmitt, Carl, The Concept of the Political (George Schwab trans., 1976) (1932); Carl Schmitt, The Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy (Ellen Kennedy trans., 1985). See also Carl Schmitt, Sobre Tres Modos de Pensar la Ciencia Juridica (Montserrat Herrero trans., 1996); Robert Howse, From Legitimacy to Dictatorship – and Back Again: Leo Strauss's Critique of the Anti-Liberalism of Carl Schmitt, in Law as Politics: Carl Schmitt's Critique of Liberalism 56, 87 n.20 (David Dyzenhaus ed., 1998).Google Scholar

²⁷ See Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil (R.J. Hollingdale trans., 1973); Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals (Douglas Smith trans., 1996); Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra (Thomas Common trans., 1916).Google Scholar

²⁸ See Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling and the Sickness unto Death (Walter Lowrie trans., 1954).Google Scholar

²⁹ For an example, see Leon Walras, Elements of Pure Economics, or the Theory of Social Wealth (William Jafe trans., 1977).Google Scholar

³⁰ See Marx, Karl, Capital: A Critique of Political Economy (Frederick Engels & Ernest Untermann eds., Samuel Moore & Edward Aveling trans., 1906); Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels (D. Ryazanoff ed., Eden Paul & Cedar Paul trans., 1963); Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (Daniel de Leon trans., 3d ed. 1919); Karl Marx, On the Jewish Question, in Karl Marx: Early Writings 1 (T.B. Bottomore ed. & trans., 1963).Google Scholar

³¹ See Freud, Sigmund, A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis (G. Stanley Hall trans., 1920).Google Scholar

³² See Butler, Judith, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (1990).Google Scholar

³³ See SAUSSURE, FERDINAD DE, COURSE IN GENERAL LINGUISTICS (Charles Bally et al. eds., Wade Baskin trans., Peter Owen Ltd. 1959) (1907-11).Google Scholar

³⁴ Kennedy, supra note 8 at 1156-7. See G.W.F. Hegel, The Phenomenology of Mind (J.B. Baillie trans., 1971). Hegel's work is very nicely explained by Herbert Marcuse. See Herbert Marcuse, Reason and Revolution: Hegel and the Rise of Social Theory (2d ed. 1960). See also Catherine Colliot-Thelene, Le Desenchantement de l'Etat: De Hegel a Max Weber (1992).Google Scholar

³⁵ See MARTTI KOSKENNIEMI, FROM APOLOGY TO UTOPIA: THE STRUCTURE OF INTERNATIONAL LEGAL ARGUMENT (Lakimiesliiton Kustannus, 1989).Google Scholar

³⁶ Deleuze, and Parnet, , supra note 2 at 1.Google Scholar

³⁷ Id. at 2.Google Scholar

³⁸ Id.Google Scholar