Beyond the Law?: The Justice of Deconstruction

This paper offers a close reading of Derridas essay Force of Law that emphasises the twin strengths of a deconstructive approach to questions of law and justice -- textual analysis and political context. Derridas interest is in limit or test cases, and so he engages with the fraying edges of the law, its borders, the frontiers that are most heavily policed because they are most fragile, for example capital punishment, genocide, general strikes and terrorism. Derrida undertakes an exploration of violence through a reinterpretation of Walter Benjamins Critique of Violence. At the heart of Derridas difficult argument is a demand for justice that goes beyond the cataloguing of specific injustices, and beyond the terms of Benjamins critique. The utopian impulse that underpins Force of Law is carried over into Specters of Marx, Derridas recent explicit grappling with the legacy of Marxism. The links between these two texts by Derrida implies a sustained politics of radical commitment on the part of deconstruction, a commitment to future forms of legality and egalitarianism, a theory of justice posited upon prescience rather than precedent.     

Too Many or Too Few? The Increase in Federal Ministerial Advisers 1972–1999

This paper examines recently published figures that show the increase in ministerial staff between 1972 and 1996 (Dunn 1997). A careful examination of the table in Dunn's book reveals it gives a misleading impression of the number of ministerial staff; the number of advisory staff to ministers; and the growth in advisory resources over the Hawke–Keating period. By re-analysing the figures the paper reveals the reality of the growth in advisory staff to ministers in 1972–1999. It provides an account of the number of staff providing policy and political advice to ministers in ministerial offices, rather than total staff numbers. It reveals advisory resources to ministers have grown significantly since the introduction of ministerial advisers in 1972. However, the growth in adviser numbers over the Hawke–Keating period was more modest than is suggested by Dunn's table. The paper provides the base data needed for a discussion of the increase in ministerial staff and whether there are too few or too many federal ministerial advisers.