Factory of Law

Does law conceal the relationships of power or express formal rules? What distinguishes the production of scientific objectivity from the establishment of a legal fact? How does legal fiction weave the seamless fabric of social connections? In his innovative research, anthropologist and sociologist Bruno Latour analyzes the functioning of the French Council of State, which is part of the complex machine of checks and balances built by Napoleon Bonaparte. Observing the activities of the Council of State allows us to understand the very essence of the structure of the French Republic and law in general. Law interests Latour not as an ideological or formally logical construct, but as a necessary universal connecting principle for the state. The Council of State, with its collective memory and mandatory reference to the original precedent, in a sense preserves for history the disparate voices of the past, taking into account which, society expands its boundaries.