Law, objectives of government and regimes of truth: Foucault’s understanding of law and the transformation of the law of the EU internal market

Författare

Leila Brännström

Summary, in English

Drawing on Security, Territory, Population and The Birth of Biopolitics, this article aims, firstly, to consolidate our understanding of Foucault’s engagement with law by fleshing out his approach to law and by clarifying that he distinguishes between different kinds of law on the basis of the objectives that law serves and the regime of truth that it embodies. Secondly, using this understanding, the article proceeds to analyze the transformation of EU internal market law in the last few decades and to argue that this body of law today performs the tasks of law in neoliberal government as pointed out by Foucault in these lectures, namely of expanding the domain of market values and mechanisms, and of restricting the exercise of legitimate government by opposing the rule of law to planning. In this analysis, particular attention is paid to the way in which justiciable rights function as a technology of neoliberal rule within the internal market.

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