The author argues that in Lindahl’s Authority and the Globalisation of Inclusion and Exclusion,
and also in his Julius Stone Address “Inside and Outside Global Law”, one can find a) a
great rebuttal to the once fashionable deconstructionist fantasies about “multitudes” (Hardt and
Negri) and to a variously termed “community of difference” (Nancy, Blanchot, Esposito,
Agamben) that excludes nothing and no one; b) an interesting concept of law as linked with collective
action; c) an ingenious questioning of the vexed binary of representative and direct democracy.
At the same time, Lindahl’s theory is argued to be susceptible of significant improvement
if the central notion of a-legality were to be defined in a non-ambiguous way, if the presently
unclear relation of his guiding principle of the “dutiful restraint of majorities” to political
liberalism were to be spelled out, and if his counterintuitive blessing of a-legal conduct with the
insignia of constituent power were to be backed up by a stronger justification.
