Initially, deliberative politics offers a failure of self‐identity in that the literature dealing with it divides between its determinate elevation in terms of reason, and such, and its dissipation in response to the diversity of interests pressing on it. Next, drawing on the resources of poststructural jurisprudence and by way of locating law at a defining limit of deliberative politics, a similar divide is found in law itself. Then, more productively, law is shown to be constituted with‐in that divide and (...) to take characteristic content from it. Finally, the analysis is returned to deliberative politics where the divide found in the literature can now be seen as offering this politics possibilities of effective constitution and distinctive content. (shrink)