Abstract

This paper argues that no legal order is possible unless it is bounded in space, time, membership and content, ie that boundaries are an intrinsic feature of the concept of law. In particular, while the organisation of the inside/outside distinction in terms of domestic and foreign state orders is certainly contingent, not so the distinction between inside/outside in terms of the contrast between a space deemed to be a collective's own space and strange places, which is constitutive for any possible legal order. The constitutive role of boundaries for legal order becomes apparent in the face of a-legal behaviour, ie behaviour that contests the distinction between legality and illegality as drawn in the spatial, temporal, subjective and material boundaries of the legal