Temporal Boundaries of Law and Politics: Out of Joint

In the last decade, the changing role of time in society has taken centre stage in social theoretical and sociological debate. A prominent, but surely not the only, aspect of this debate hinges on the so-called acceleration of time and its societal consequences. The way in which the experience, and acceleration, of time has influenced law and politics remains, however, underdeveloped; despite the fact that time is fundamental to the way in which law and politics function. How, for example, does society’s structural acceleration impact on justice? How does the judiciary cope with the demand for justice here and now? Do constitutions really offer stability and predictability in an ever changing global world? More generally, both law and politics employ time to order society but they are also limited in what can be effectuated by time. And is this tension between temporal possibilities and limitations that the contributors to this collection – drawn from different fields of law, as well as from other disciplines – examine.