3
Law and authority in space and time
At least so far as law is concerned, reality wears a mask in the shape of ‘the here
and the now’. Space (not just ‘the here’) and time (not just ‘the now’) must be
explored to understand law and authority properly. In furtherance of the his-
torical and normative general jurisprudence with which to evaluate patterns of
law and authority relevant to globalisation, this chapter proposes a theory
which contemplates the space and time dimensions of law and authority. I call
this ‘the Space–Time Matrix’, drawing on writings of Eugen Rosenstock-
Huessy. If there is a third dimension of human being, then it would be the spir-
itual or metaphysical dimension. That too is explored, under the heading of
‘ultimate reality and meaning’. This dimension can only ever be revealed to
humans at some spatial location in society (for example, to a loner on a moun-
tain or in a room full of people) and at points in time. This is contemplated by
the Space–Time Matrix.
Frequent references will be made to this model in the balance of this book. It
grounds the way I attempt to make sense of law and authority, historically and
normatively. Assertions in this chapter need not all be accepted, though, for the
purpose of the historical jurisprudence proposed and the historical discussion
which occupies the balance of the Parts of this book. It will suffice if the present
chapter conveys law and authority as morally, culturally and politically con-
structed (that is, spatially on the ‘Space Axis’) by reference to experiences and
expectations of the future (that is, temporally, on the ‘Time Axis’). This chapter
may, however, prove helpful, in and of itself, for developing a normative
jurisprudence (that is, a principled approach to the consideration and deploy-
ment of law) in the face of the challenges of globalisation.
3.1 Normative foundations of a historical jurisprudence
Our observations in connection with globalisation forbid confinement to
the state of a legal consideration of authority. Rather, resort must be had to the
ultimate reality and meaning which underlies social authority and conceptions
of right and wrong. With an appreciation of fundamental authority then in

pursuing the idea in their studies. As such, ‘URAM’ has been described as ‘that
to which the human mind reduces and relates everything: that which man
does not reduce to anything else’.
2
This notion is compatible with the Judeo-
Christian God. The Tetragammaton, the Hebrew ‘YHWH’ pronounced
‘Yahweh’, translates to such a notion, although personified.
3
It means ‘I am who
53 Law and authority in space and time
111
Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A Book for None and All, trans. Walter Kaufman
(Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1978), p. 259. Nietzsche’s philosophy suggests that God
was never alive. Cf. ‘death of God’ theology since the 1960s which has emphasised the
hiddenness and mysteriousness of God: see Daniel J. Peterson, ‘Speaking of God after the
Death of God’ (2005) 44 Dialog: A Journal of Theology 207–26.
112
Ronald Glasberg, ‘The Evolution of the URAM Concept in the Journal: An Analytic Survey of
Key Articles’ (1996) 19 Ultimate Reality and Meaning 69–77, 70 citing Tibor Horvath in the
first issue of the journal. My use of such deconstructed conceptualism is not intended to
eschew the richness of accounts of the personhood of God.
113
See Exodus 3: 14–15: ‘And God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM . . . Thus you shall say to the
children of Israel: ‘The LORD God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac,
and the God of Jacob, has sent you. This is My name forever, and this is My memorial to all
generations . . .’ ” ’ [original italics, NKJV].
I will be’ or ‘I will be who I am’ or ‘I will be who I will be’.
4
As such, this is a
Being whose essence is its existence, given that it is defined by reference only to

who, at least, are ready to admit – that divinity, in a positive sense, is the essence
of truth and power of some kind of highest principle; but the same truth is valid
even for thinkers denying such a divinity, for such a denial would in practice
merely consist in transferring an identical dignity and function to another object.
Such an alternative object might be ‘nature’, creativity or an unconscious and
amorphous will to life. It might also be ‘reason’, progress, or even a redeeming
nothingness into which man would be destined to disappear. Even such appar-
ently ‘godless’ ideologies are theologies.
9
54 Towards a Globalist Jurisprudence
114
Karl Barth, ‘The Place of Theology’ reprinted in Ray S. Anderson (ed.), Theological
Foundations for Ministry: Selected Readings for a Theology of the Church in Ministry
(Edinburgh: T.&T. Clark Ltd, 1979), p. 33. In Taoism: ‘Man takes his law from the Earth; the
Earth takes its law from Heaven; Heaven takes its law from the Tâo. The law of the Tâo is its
being what it is.’ Tâo Téh King, cited in Philip Allott, Eunomia: New Order for a New World
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990), part 1 cover page.
115
St Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, in Anton C. Pegis (ed.), Introduction to St Thomas
Aquinas (New York: The Modern Library, 1948), p. 21. See too generally Questions II (‘The
Existence of God’) & III (‘On the Simplicity of God’), pp. 21–33.
116
Moshe Kaveh, ‘Faith and Science in the Third Millennium’ in Eshkolot: Essays in Memory of
Rabbi Ronald Lubofsky (Melbourne: Hybrid Publishers, 2002), p. 313.
117
See ch. 1, p. 2 above.
118
Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy, Out of Revolution: Autobiography of Western Man [1938] (Oxford:
Berg, 1993), p. 725.
9

(arguably orientated towards a new god, being that of economic progress or
Mammon). As Niklas Luhmann noted, law requires principles which give
meaning to the ‘right answers’ which law produces: for example, this may take
the form of ‘the will of God’ or ‘the maximisation of welfare’.
13
With the notion
of God and ultimate reality and meaning in place, we can now begin to analyse
the way authority is constructed and might be improved in legal systems.
Authority and allegiance are moral notions located in the socially constructed
individual. Law is dependent upon tapping into ultimate reality and meaning
as the moral, metaphysical grundnorm or foundation, if law is to be more than
55 Law and authority in space and time
110
Philip Allott, The Health of Nations: Society and Law Beyond the State (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2002), [12.30].
111
Xenophanes, quoted in Robin Horton, Patterns of Thought in Africa and the West: Essays on
Magic, Religion and Science (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), p. 424.
Xenophanes observed that ‘if an ox could paint a picture, its god would look like an ox’:
Allott, Health of Nations, [12.49] n. 49, citing Dodds, The Greeks and the Irrational.
112
Jesus was of course Jewish and was likely to have been swarthy in the manner at that time of
the inhabitants of the Holy Land, almost certainly with the ‘well trimmed’ hair required by
Ezekiel 45: 20. On the anthropomorphic projection of the Christian God from human ideals,
see Ludwig Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity, trans. George Eliot [1851] (Amherst:
Prometheus Books, 1989).
113
Niklas Luhmann, Law as a Social System, trans. K. A. Ziegert (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2004), p. 429.
just the untrammelled exercise of power. The social construction of the indi-

the front door. Speech and writing are implicated in this struggle for survival
and significance, which is observed, biographically, and responded to by society.
Our only references are the words of fellow humans in the present and words
recorded from the past. Music, art and the performing arts contribute to this
significance, but they are inarticulate unless they are lyrical – that is, unless they
contain words with objective-orientated meaning. In her analysis of the alien-
ation of social activity from human thought, Hannah Arendt observed that
‘Men in the plural . . . can experience meaningfulness only because they can talk
56 Towards a Globalist Jurisprudence
114
Rosenstock-Huessy, Out of Revolution, pp. 6–12.
115
See Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958), p. 97:
‘The chief characteristic of this specifically human life, whose appearance and disappearance
constitute worldly events, is that it is itself always full of events which ultimately can be told as
a story, establish a biography . . . For action and speech . . . are indeed the two activities whose
end result will always be a story with enough coherence to be told, no matter how accidental or
haphazard the single events and their causation may appear to be.’
with and make sense to each other and to themselves.’
16
At once speech and lit-
eracy become the only media for the conscious, articulate participation in sig-
nificance. The unit of significance is the word, carried in speech.
Philip Allott emphasises the significance of words and speech uniquely
amongst legal philosophers. ‘We live and die for words; we create and kill for
words; we build and destroy for words; wars and revolutions are made for words.
Sovereignty, the people, the faith, the law, the fatherland, self-determination,
nationality, independence, security, land, freedom . . .’
17
‘Everything in the

statement is as true for communism as it is for liberalism, given that the unit of
57 Law and authority in space and time
116
Arendt, Human Condition, pp. 4, 50; see too Frank G. Kirkpatrick, A Moral Ontology for a
Theistic Ethic: Gathering the Nations in Love and Justice (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003), ch. 5.
117
Allott, Eunomia, [1.10]; see too his Health of Nations, p. x and [3.17].
118
Allott, Eunomia, [6.56], [8.21].
119
Allott, Eunomia, [3.7]. Allott also writes of the possibility that there is no frontier between
personal psychology and the social psychology of the nation: Allott, Health of Nations, [4.82],
[5.3]. On the self-critical, autobiographical attitude required for these times, see Abdullahi A.
An-Na’im, ‘Globalization and Jurisprudence: An Islamic Law Perspective’ (2005) 54 Emory
Law Journal 25–51, 41; and, more popularly, Michelle P. Brown and Richard J. Kelly (eds.),
You’re History: How People Make the Difference (London: Continuum Press, 2006).
all human social order is the individual. Spraying deodorant with CFCs in New
York may contribute to skin cancer deaths in Chile; driving a car may lead to
lethal floods in Bangladesh through ozone layer depletion.
20
The need for the
self-conscious exercise of individual responsibility for the world has never been
more apparent than now in the increasingly interconnected world represented
by globalisation. Especially is this so, if one accepts the frequent criticism that
globalisation provides an excuse for state governments to abrogate economic
management to treaty-based formulas which tend to reward free trade at the
cost of other values.
Two propositions emerge, if law is to work meaningfully and effectively. First,
law must appeal to the individual. Second, the individual must think outside
individual interests. A normative jurisprudence must cultivate these proposi-

Promise: Learning from Bhopal’ in Michael Likosky (ed.), Transnational Legal Processes
(London: Butterworths, 2002).
all his meaning-structures and methods, i.e., into the historical meaning of their
primal establishment, and especially into the meaning of all the inherited mean-
ings taken over unnoticed in this primal establishment, as well as those taken
over later on’ – and this must not simply be rejected as ‘metaphysical’
21
[original
italics]. This is termed by Husserl ‘a return to the naïveté of life – but in a reflec-
tion which rises above this naïveté . . . to overcome the “scientific” character of
traditional objectivistic philosophy’.
22
This returns us to our ‘how?’enquiry: that
is, how is meaning bestowed in science,
23
or law.
Applying this scientific technique to law, the data for investigation are com-
munications. Rosenstock-Huessy’s ‘grammatical method’ or ‘cross of reality’
provides a key to understanding the human constitution of society and the
society’s constitution of the human. Essentially, humans are socially deter-
mined and society-determining creatures through their communications,
which can be mapped according to four orientations on two axes. They are:
close social relations (interior) versus distant social relations (exterior) on the
Space Axis; and history versus the future on the Time Axis.
24
Diagrammatically, these normative influences by which the individual is
located in society can be expressed on the Space–Time Matrix; see figure 3.1.
Each axis will be elaborated below in some detail, beyond the suggestive
model offered by Rosenstock-Huessy, to attempt to understand the bestowal of
authority. In summary, the individual is caught between, on the Space Axis,

Kant: Political Writings, trans. N. B. Nisbet (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970,
2nd edn 1991), pp. 116–25; Jerome Hall, Foundations of Jurisprudence (Indianapolis: Bobbs-
Merrill Co., 1973), p. 117. See too Bikhu Parekh and R. N. Berki (eds.), The Morality of Politics
(London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd, 1972).
This type of social conditioning process is arguably universal, concerned as it is,
like Philip Allott’s Eunomia, with emphasising ‘the internal points of reference
of each developing human mind’, not the ‘external points of reference of any
particular culture’.
26
That is, the individual awakens to the society (the society
does not awaken to the individual) in a universal social process. On the Time
Axis, individuals can only measure or calculate activity by reference to norms
derived from the past or hoped for in the future. The extreme conservative will
look only to the past for norms, whilst the extreme radical will only look for
norms in a vision of the future.
Social conflict and alienation from norms or laws occur when there is an
imbalance in the orientation of norms on this matrix for the individual – for
example, the norms break too radically from the past and do not have interior
moral appeal. For widespread allegiance to norms and respect of authority,
there must be widespread appeal to the individual in all four orientations. That
will not necessarily make all law good, but it will make law more meaningful.
We have already noted Einstein’s theory of the relativity of time and space as
a symbol which may have helped to account for the emerging consciousness of
globalisation as a concept.
27
Anthony Giddens has observed that globalisation
is characterised by the radical transformation of space and time. Time and space
have become ‘disembedded’
28
from the social world. Time is now significantly

present.
It is perhaps a poetic coincidence that a focus on ‘space and time’ as a matter
of jurisprudence just so happens to be relevant to globalisation in a way which
is becoming established in the scholarly discourse on globalisation. This
jurisprudential technique will be used in future chapters to attempt to under-
stand normative authority in the past millennium, and, most importantly, now.
3.2.1 The Space Axis: personal morality versus politics
Enquiry into authority begins even earlier than with our inquisitive child in
chapter 1. It begins with the baby. If Rousseau was correct to say ‘the first tears
of children are prayers’, it was because babies have complete reliance on a power
beyond themselves for their very survival.
29
Human babies are spectacularly
underdeveloped compared with the babies of other higher mammals, both
physiologically (a great deal of physical development occurs outside the womb
compared with other mammals) and in terms of drives and instincts.
30
Many
babies need to be taught to fall asleep! A distinctive attribute of being human is
that conditioning and education are required by our very nature. The human
condition cannot be separated from human conditioning. Crucially, that social
conditioning begins with being called a name.
Naming is the fundamental normative act. It is in the act of naming a human
that it first becomes a someone with a sense of identity and a consciousness of
her or his own being.
31
Early on, ideally, the infant is made to feel secure in the
world and is addressed by parents with the second person singular pronoun
‘you’ together with the name, in the imperative.
32