祝融说。

In the state's grand "forced convergence" machine, law occupies a unique and paradoxical position. It is both the most refined, most "civilized" expression of state violence and the most systematic, most ruthless operating script of that violence. Hailed as "freedom carved in stone," it represents humanity's great achievement in dispelling the brutal shadow of power with the light of reason; yet it can also become "chains bound upon the body," the ultimate tool through which a ruling will solidifies its own "observation" into an irresistible social reality.

The previous chapter treated law, police, and prison as mutually cooperating parts in the state's "toolbox." This chapter will focus on "law" alone and subject it to a stress test. We will explore what the foundation of this seemingly solid edifice of law is actually built upon. Under what kind of pressure do its load-bearing walls begin to crack? And when the entire edifice faces the risk of collapse, what is the emergency "structural support" hidden in its deepest recesses?

This stress test proceeds in three steps. First, we will reaffirm and deepen our understanding of the nature of law. Law is not an objective truth descending from the void, but rather the textualization and systematization of the mainstream "observational consensus" at a particular historical moment and within a particular power configuration. It is a map of reality drawn by the victor and declared to be the "only official version."

Next, we will apply pressure to this map. We will explore under what circumstances this map printed on paper loses its ability to guide reality. We will argue that when the map (law) violently conflicts with the rugged terrain of reality (profound "observational divergence"), the authority of law rapidly evaporates. At that moment, the only force that can forcibly make people "walk according to the map" is the naked violence monopolized by the state.

Finally, we will push the pressure to its limit. Introducing the core insights of Carl Schmitt and Giorgio Agamben, we will explore the darkest and most revealing moment of the legal order -- the "state of exception." In this state, in order to preserve the very "existence" of the entire legal order, the law itself can be "suspended" by the sovereign. This constitutes the deepest paradox of modern power: a system designed to maintain "consensus" ultimately depends, for its own survival, on an absolute power that can unilaterally "suspend" all consensus. Here, at the limits of law, we will see the specter of sovereign violence manifest in its clearest form.

This exploration of the limits of law will not only reveal the cards at the bottom of state power's operation but will also force us to reconsider that ancient question: Do we live under the "rule of law," or under "law ultimately interpreted by violence"?

Law: The Solidified "Observational Consensus"

To understand the limits of law, we must first understand the nature of law. In the traditional narratives of Enlightenment thought and liberalism, law is typically endowed with an almost sacred status. It is seen as the crystallization of "public reason," the "common rules" achieved by all citizens through social contract, aimed at safeguarding individual freedom and social welfare. From this perspective, law is an objective, neutral arbiter transcending the will of any particular individual or group.

This is undoubtedly a beautiful ideal worth fighting for. However, a truly penetrating political analysis cannot remain merely at the level of ideals; it must confront the generative mechanisms and operational logic of law in the real world. Within our theoretical framework, we can offer a more critical definition of the nature of law:

Law is the product of a society's mainstream "observational consensus" being selected, refined, encoded, and ultimately "solidified" in the form of coercive text at a specific historical node, through the operation of power. In essence, it is a "static photograph," attempting to freeze a dynamic, contentious reality within a particular composition and focus.

This definition contains three layers that must be revealed one by one: the "consensus" foundation of law, the power bias in its process of "solidification," and the inherent limitations of law as "text."

First Layer: Law as the Sediment of "Consensus"

Law does not descend from heaven, nor is it conceived by philosophers in their studies. Any law that can be effectively implemented must have some degree of social "observational consensus" -- whether broad or local -- as its support. These consensuses originate from a society's long-term historical, cultural, religious, and economic practices.

Customary Law and Unwritten Consensus: Before the large-scale advent of written codes, human society was primarily governed by "customary law." Customary law is the long-accumulated, unwritten "observational consensus." For example, the ancient rules of a village regarding "how common pastures should be used" or "how neighborhood disputes should be mediated" constitute a set of effective "certainties" that the villagers have "converged" through countless interactions and negotiations over generations of shared life. They are effective not because police enforce them, but because they have been internalized as second nature for each member, forming part of their shared "reality."

Written Law and Explicit Consensus: The birth of modern written law marks an effort to systematically "textualize" these diffuse, unwritten consensuses. For example, many fundamental principles of modern commercial contract law (such as "offer and acceptance," "good faith") can be traced back to the "lex mercatoria" spontaneously formed among medieval merchants to ensure transactional security. The legislator's work, to a great extent, is to refine and standardize these "observational consensuses" that have proven effective in practice, making them applicable to a broader scope.

From this perspective, law does indeed have a "consensus" dimension. A law that runs smoothly must, to a considerable degree, align with the general moral intuitions and behavioral expectations of members of society. A law that seriously departs from social reality and is not internally recognized by the people will, even with the support of state violence, incur astronomical enforcement costs and ultimately be reduced to a scrap of paper.

However, we must not naively believe that law is merely a passive reflection of "social consensus." For the process of selecting "which" consensuses can be written into the code and "which" must be discarded -- from among the complex, even contradictory, various "consensuses" -- this process itself is a "solidification" steeped in the operation of power.

Second Layer: The Power Bias in the Process of "Solidification" of Law

The transformation of fluid "observational consensus" into static "legal text" is by no means a neutral technical operation. It is a battlefield full of political struggle and contestation of interests. On this battlefield, social groups with greater power are more likely to have their own "observations" "solidified" as "law" representing the universal will.

Struggle in the Legislative Process: In modern democracies, the legislative process appears on the surface to be a rational process of debate and voting by legislators. But behind it lies a "shadow war" of lobbying, pressure, and political donations waged by various powerful interest groups (such as business associations, labor unions, environmental organizations). Whether the final version of a tax law favors the rich or the poor often depends not on which proposal is more "just," but on which group has greater political influence. The law that ultimately emerges is less the crystallization of "public reason" than a textual record of a temporary "equilibrium of forces" reached after the struggle of different power subjects.

History Written by the "Victors": After undergoing drastic social change (such as revolution or civil war), new legal systems are often unilaterally formulated by the victors. The primary task of the new constitution and codes is to solidify the victors' "observational consensus" (for example, "private property is inviolable" or "means of production belong to the whole people") as the state's fundamental law, while simultaneously declaring the losers' "observation" "illegal" or "reactionary." At this moment, law is "the victor's justice," repackaging and legitimizing an outcome determined by violence in the language of reason and universality.

The "Elite" Nature of Legal Language: The professionalization and technicalization of law make it a "special language" that only a small minority of legal elites (lawyers, judges, jurists) can fully master. Ordinary people, though living under the rule of law, often cannot fully understand legal texts filled with obscure terminology and complex logic. This gap in language itself constitutes a form of power. It keeps the ultimate power of legal interpretation firmly in the hands of the legal elite. And the educational background, class position, and ideology of this elite deeply influence their interpretation of law, thereby further reinforcing a particular "observation" in judicial practice.

Therefore, when we conduct an "archaeology of power" on any law, we can always find buried deep within it the "observation" biases of a particular class, race, gender, or interest group. The "universal, neutral, objective" face presented by law is, to a great extent, a discursive strategy for successfully disguising "particular" interests as "universal" ones. It is a carefully drawn map that not only marks the roads but also, through its very method of drawing, suggests which destinations are worth going to and which are to be ignored.

Third Layer: The Inherent Limitations of Law as "Text"

Even setting aside power bias, merely examining law's "text" attribute reveals its inherent, insurmountable limitations. For text is static, closed, and finite, while the social reality it attempts to regulate is dynamic, open, and infinitely complex.

"Legal Lag": The development of society and technology constantly raises new questions and new "observational divergences," while legal revision always follows behind. When the internet emerged, laws concerning data privacy, online speech, and virtual property were almost blank. The edifice of law forever chases the speeding train of reality, meaning countless areas of social reality always exist in the "gray zone" or "lawless zone" of the law.

"Ambiguity of Legal Provisions": No matter how hard legislators try, the ambiguity of language can never be eradicated. For example, the law provides for "legitimate self-defense," but "what constitutes the necessary limits of defense?"; the law prohibits "unfair competition," but "what is the 'fair' boundary of commercial conduct?" These ambiguous areas leave enormous space for judicial interpretation. The same case, tried by different judges, based on different "observations" of the same legal provision, can produce completely opposite verdicts. The "certainty" of the legal text is once again dissolved in the act of interpretation.

"Areas Law Cannot Reach": Law primarily regulates external behavior, but it can hardly touch inner motivations, emotions, and informal social relations. Law can prohibit the "act" of discrimination, but it cannot eradicate the "idea" of discrimination. Law can stipulate the division of property in a divorce, but it cannot repair broken emotions. In any society, a vast amount of the "soft order" that sustains daily operation is maintained by non-legal "observational consensuses" such as morality, custom, and trust. Law is merely the hard tip of the iceberg of order, visible above the water.

To summarize, law -- this solidified "observational consensus" -- is by its very nature necessarily imperfect, biased, and lagging. It is not the entirety of order, nor even the most solid part of order. It is merely a map, drawn at a particular historical moment by particular forces, attempting to freeze a dynamic world into a static image.

Most of the time, when the map roughly corresponds to reality, it can provide effective guidance, and the authority of law can be maintained. But when the terrain of reality undergoes violent tectonic movement -- when the plains marked on the map have turned into deep valleys, rivers have changed course, mountains have risen -- the obsolescence of this old map is only a matter of time. And the authority of law, before the chasm of reality, will expose its fragile paper nature.

When Law Fails: State Violence as the Ultimate Guarantor of Consensus

The authority of law derives from a delicate social-psychological contract: the vast majority of people, the vast majority of the time, believe in and voluntarily follow this "map of reality" to regulate their own behavior. The maintenance of this belief depends both on the law's rough alignment in content with the mainstream "observational consensus" of society and on the "fairness and justice" it embodies procedurally. However, when deep social crisis arrives, this fragile contract of belief faces the risk of being torn apart.

The failure of law does not always occur in a dramatic, openly trampled manner. More often, it is a gradual, cancer-like spread of authority loss. This process typically reaches its tipping point in the following situations.

Critical Situations of Legal Failure:

1. Deep Economic Crisis: When a large-scale economic crisis (such as the Great Depression of 1929 or the 2008 financial tsunami) erupts, the "observational consensus" of society's lower strata undergoes fundamental shock. When large numbers of people lose their jobs and homes, and they "observe" that the financial elites who caused the crisis are not punished but instead bailed out by the state, their belief in fundamental legal precepts like "equality before the law" and "private property is inviolable" collapses. They begin to "observe" law as an unjust game designed to serve the rich and exploit the poor. At this point, large-scale occupation movements, riots, and even direct expropriation of the wealthy's property acquire a certain "moral legitimacy." The text of the law remains on the books, but its foundation as "consensus" in the people's hearts has rotted away.
2. Sharp Identity Politics Conflicts: When society is deeply torn along racial, religious, or ethnic lines, different identity groups develop completely opposed "observational consensuses." What one side "observes" as a "national hero" is, in the other's eyes, a "murderer"; what one side regards as a "holy site" is, in the other's view, "occupied territory." In such circumstances, any attempt at a "neutral" legal ruling will be seen by at least one side as favoritism. Law is no longer a bridge to bridge differences but a "trophy" to be fought over and attacked by both sides. At this point, the authority of law rapidly gives way to the passion of identity; different groups may resort to their own "private laws" (such as religious law or tribal vengeance), while the state's law is set aside.
3. Loss of State Credibility: When the state apparatus itself (government, judiciary) is widely "observed" as corrupt, inefficient, and unjust, law loses its most basic enforcement credibility. If the people believe that the interpretation and enforcement of law depend entirely on whether you have money, power, or connections, then "abiding by the law" is seen as foolish behavior. The entire society falls into a state governed by "unspoken rules," with the legal text becoming a decorative facade. From bribery to purchasing official positions, a "parallel underground order" based on informal power relations begins to dominate reality, operating alongside the law.
4. External Subversive Challenges: When a state faces foreign invasion, large-scale terrorist attacks, or sustained external political intervention, its internal legal order also becomes precarious. To respond to external threats, the state may issue a series of emergency decrees, restricting civil liberties and strengthening social control. In such circumstances, "national security" -- the highest "observational consensus" -- overrides the "individual rights" consensus cherished in peacetime. The normal procedures of law are simplified or even bypassed; state violence operates in a more direct, less constrained manner.

When one or more of these situations develops to the extreme, the edifice of law truly faces the risk of collapse. The written provisions can no longer constrain people's behavior; court rulings cannot quell society's anger. The original "observational consensus" has shattered completely, and society hovers on the edge of "anomie," poised to fall into civil war or anarchy.

Violence as the Ultimate "Anchor"

At this moment, the force deliberately concealed during peacetime by the civilized garb of law steps onto the stage in its most naked form, playing the indisputable role of "ultimate guarantor." That force is the organized violence monopolized by the state.

When law fails, the "convergence" mechanism based on "negotiation" and "voluntariness" has completely collapsed. At this point, the only thing that can provide a new anchor of "certainty" for this disordered society is the purest form of "forced convergence."

From Police to Military: In the early stages of legal failure, the state first deploys its conventional violence tool -- the police. But when the scale and intensity of unrest exceed what the police can control, when some police officers themselves begin to waver due to their own class or identity affiliations, the state plays its final card -- the military. The intervention of the military marks that the nature of social conflict has escalated from "maintaining public order" as an "internal issue" to "suppressing rebellion" as a "quasi-war" state. The violence used by the military -- in scale, intensity, and freedom of action granted -- far exceeds that of the police. They are no longer agents carefully balancing "law enforcement" against "rights infringement," but fighting machines whose sole objective is to eliminate "hostile forces" and restore "state sovereignty."

Violence as "Forced Legislation": The "presence" of the military on the streets is itself a new, temporary form of "legislation." Martial law, curfews -- these commands, directly backed by violence, replace conventional legal procedures. At this moment, the basic rules of society are no longer determined by parliamentary debate but defined by the muzzles of tanks and the rifles of soldiers. Violence, here, plays the role of an unreasoning "legislator," offering no reasons, only a consequence: obey, or be eliminated.

Manufacturing a "Consensus of Fear": When the original belief-based "observational consensus" has disintegrated, state violence attempts to manufacture a new, more basic "consensus" -- a consensus based on fear. Through large-scale arrests, suppression, even indiscriminate killing, the state transmits the simplest message to all members of society: regardless of what "observational divergences" exist among you, regardless of how unjust you consider the current order, there is one thing you all must "observe" -- that the power of the state machine is irresistible, and any challenge to it will result in your physical destruction. The goal of this "consensus of fear" is not to win hearts but to paralyze the nerves of resistance, forcibly "freezing" society in a "stable" state prescribed by violence.

Thus, we can see a cruel cycle of power. In a healthy society, order relies primarily on "negotiated consensus," with law as its core manifestation and state violence as a distant threat held in reserve. When social crisis deepens, "negotiated consensus" breaks down, and the authority of law disintegrates. To prevent the complete dissolution of society, state violence steps from behind the curtain to the front of the stage, using "forced consensus" (particularly the "consensus of fear") to replace the failed law as the sole and final guarantor of order.

This reveals a profound truth: the authority of law does not come from itself, but from its ability to successfully "suspend" or "delegate" the state violence behind it. Law is like a credit currency; its value depends entirely on whether its issuer (the state) has sufficient "credit reserves" of violence, and whether, when necessary, it is willing to "honor its obligations without hesitation."

Yet the story does not end there. In certain most extreme moments of crisis, the state may even take a more astonishing action: to save the legal order, it chooses to "kill" the law. This leads us to the darkest core of modern sovereignty theory -- the "state of exception."

The State of Exception: The Paradox of Suspending Consensus to Preserve Consensus

"The sovereign is he who decides on the state of exception."

This famous dictum by the German jurist Carl Schmitt is like a key, unlocking the most hidden door to understanding modern power. Behind the door lies a shadowy zone where the boundary between law and illegality, order and chaos, is completely blurred. This zone is the "state of exception."

In conventional rule-of-law thinking, law is supreme. Any power, including the state's administrative power, must operate within the framework of law. This constitutes the core principle of the "rule-of-law state." Yet Schmitt, with his cold realist gaze, launched a fatal challenge to this idealized picture. He pointed out that within any legal order, there is necessarily embedded a point of "sovereign" power capable of "suspending" that legal order itself. This power, when facing a fundamental crisis threatening the very "existence" of the entire community, can transcend all existing laws and make the most fundamental "decision."

The Nature of the State of Exception: The Self-Suspension of Law

The "state of exception" is not simply "anarchy" or "chaos." It is a highly peculiar state of "suspension," both within and outside the law.

It is not lawless: The declaration of a state of exception is usually authorized by the constitution or law itself (for example, constitutional martial law clauses, emergency laws). From this perspective, it appears to be part of the legal order -- an "emergency exit" reserved by the law to deal with crises it cannot handle on its own.

It is simultaneously lawless: Once the state of exception is entered, the sovereign (whether a president, prime minister, or military committee) is granted the power to "suspend" part or even all of the existing laws. They can arrest citizens without trial (suspending habeas corpus), censor the press (suspending freedom of speech), expropriate private property (suspending property rights). At this moment, the substantive content of law is emptied, leaving only an empty shell of "legal validity." Citizens are no longer "protected" by law, but "subjected" to the unrestricted will of the sovereign.

This constitutes the core paradox of the "state of exception": law, in order to preserve its own existence, authorizes a power that can make it temporarily "die." It is like a person who, to treat a terminal illness, chooses to enter "artificial hibernation," with all vital signs taken over by a machine.

The State of Exception and "Bare Life"

The Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben, building on Schmitt, excavated the state of exception more deeply. He pointed out that the state of exception is the paradigm of modern politics, where power directly governs "life."

Under the normal legal order, an individual is a "citizen," his life protected by law. But in the state of exception, when the protection of law is withdrawn, this individual is reduced to his most primitive biological existence -- Agamben calls it "bare life."

A "bare life" is one that can be killed without that killing constituting "murder." His life is placed within the "abandonment" of the legal order. The Jews in Nazi concentration camps are the most extreme example of "bare life." Deprived of citizenship by German law, placed outside the law, their lives could be arbitrarily eliminated without any punishment.

Agamben warns that in contemporary politics, the "state of exception" is gradually becoming normalized -- from a temporary, emergency measure into a routine technique of governance. From the "enemy combatants" held at Guantanamo Bay (who are neither prisoners of war nor criminals, protected by no law) to the laws passed by various countries in the name of "counterterrorism" authorizing mass surveillance and preventive detention -- we see more and more individuals and groups being cast into this "gray zone" of the law, their "bare life" exposed directly before sovereign power.

The Paradox of the State of Exception: Suspending Consensus to Preserve Consensus

Now, let us return to our core concepts. "Law" is the solidified "observational consensus." So what does the "state of exception" mean?

The state of exception is when the sovereign, using his ultimate power of violent decision, unilaterally declares that the core "observational consensus" upon which society relies (i.e., the rule-of-law consensus) must be "temporarily suspended" because it faces an existential threat.

This action constitutes the deepest, most unsettling paradox of modern power:

The Contradiction of Ends and Means: The declared purpose of the state of exception is always to "save" the nation, the constitution, and the order. Yet the means it adopts are precisely the "destruction" of that order's core pillar -- the supremacy of law. It is like a surgeon who, to save a patient's life, must temporarily stop his heart. The surgery succeeds, the patient lives, but the scar on his heart, proof that it once "died," remains forever.

Who Defines the "Exception"?: The power to initiate the state of exception exposes the ultimate "Achilles' heel" of the legal order. Who has the power to "observe" and "judge" whether the current crisis is serious enough to warrant suspending the law? The answer is: the sovereign. This judgment is itself not bound by any law; it is a purely political "decision." This means that the power that ultimately decides "when law is valid and when it is not" is itself located outside the law. Beneath the foundation of the edifice of law lies a "bomb" that can detonate the foundation at any time -- and the detonator is in the hands of the sovereign.

The Danger of Normalization: The most corrosive aspect of the state of exception is its tendency toward "self-perpetuation." Once a sovereign has tasted the "convenience" of exercising power outside the law, he is likely to be inclined toward normalizing the "exception." Crises can be exaggerated or even manufactured as pretexts for maintaining emergency powers. Over time, citizens gradually become accustomed to living with diminished rights and ubiquitous surveillance. The "normal state" of law becomes a distant "exception" to be granted as a favor. At this point, the appearance of order may remain, but its core of "rule-of-law consensus" has been completely replaced by the arbitrariness of "sovereign violence."

Conclusion: At the Limits of Law

Through this stress test of law, we have arrived at the ultimate core of state power. We see that law -- this solidified "observational consensus" -- is not a self-sufficient, indestructible system. Its effectiveness depends entirely on a fragile social contract of belief.

When deep social crisis tears this contract apart, law fails. At that moment, the naked violence monopolized by the state steps in as the "ultimate guarantor," attempting to replace the shattered "rule-of-law consensus" with a "consensus of fear."

And in the most extreme moments, the sovereign can even initiate the "state of exception," "saving" order by "killing" law. At this "absolute zero" moment of law, we see the ultimate truth of power: any order claiming to be based on "consensus" ultimately rests upon a "violent decision" unconstrained by law, capable of unilaterally "suspending" all consensus.

We do not live in a world ruled by law. We live in a world ruled by a sovereign violence that "can decide when the law is invalid." Law is the delicate, civilized shackles the sovereign places on us in ordinary times. It constrains us, and (to a certain degree) constrains power itself. But when the true storm comes, the sovereign forever retains the ultimate power to cast off these shackles and, with his most primitive form of violence, redefine everything.

To understand the limits of law is to understand the boundaries of our own freedom. These boundaries are not delineated by lofty constitutional texts, but by the eternal, dynamic struggle of power between the sovereign and the people, constantly renegotiated and redrawn. And the ultimate stake in this struggle is always the most ancient, most real thing of all -- organized violence.