It is a good time to be an academic working on the (unlikely) intersections between law and anarchism and/or an anarchist interested in the operation of the law. After the publication of Elena Loizidou’s Anarchism: An Art of Living without Law (1), Saul Newman and Massimo La Torre’s book offers a completely different account of the relationship between law, anarchism and anarchists. Whilst Loizidou’s book argues that an anarchic life without law is possible and desirable, Newman and La Torre aim to offer ‘a productive tension that allows us to think both anarchism and legal theory in new ways’ (p. xiv).

The book is the product of two authors from different disciplines (Newman being a political theorist and La Torre a legal theorist). More importantly, the authors belong to two different (philosophical) traditions (Newman to the continental tradition and La Torre to the analytic one), so at best they engage critically with each other and at worst they completely refuse to engage with or even recognise each other’s validity as a tradition. The Anarchist Before the Law is, indeed, a book of productive tension in many ways and this is, perhaps, its fundamental strength.

The central argument of the book is that the law is not per se oppositional to anarchist thought. Whilst the current understanding of the law and its institutions is largely based on a hierarchical and authoritarian capitalist system (irrespective of whether we talk about liberal democracies or authoritarian regimes), this does not preclude the possibility of an alternative anti-foundational, anarchist law. Whilst, so far, the examination of law and anarchism focussed on the latter’s destituting power – that is anarchism’s desire to destroy any form of hierarchical structures, with the state and the law considered as its fundamental enemies – the book aims to focus on anarchism’s instituting power. According to the authors, this feature of anarchism is capable of freeing ‘law from the model of sovereign authority and political theology …. Anarchism, in this sense, makes law and legal institution a practice of freedom’ (pp. xiii-xiv).

In their admirable and fascinating endeavour, Newman and La Torre offer a remarkable (re)reading of different theories and practices of anarchist tradition (from ‘classical’ nineteenth-century anarchism to an individualist and post-anarchist tradition), normative and analytic legal theories which belong mainly to the liberal tradition politically (in which I include their reading of philosophical anarchism) and continental political philosophy (with figures such as Walter Benjamin, Carl Schmitt and Gilles Deleuze appearing to complement the more traditional takes on anarchism). In addition, the book offers a refreshing reading of notions, such as disobedience, violence and human rights. To that extent, readers interested in one or more traditions and/or notions would be benefited by reading the relevant chapters of the book independently. Yet, I should emphasise that the uniqueness and originality of this work lies on the fact that it harmoniously brings together all these different traditions and influences without making any of its parts look irrelevant and superfluous.

The first chapter offers a great overview of classical anarchism’s opposition to legal norms and political obligations. It functions as a prelude that presents multiple texts of anarchist theory against the law. The authors bring together their respective expertise and influence to demonstrate the similarities and differences of anarchist tendencies, e.g. from anarcho-communism (Mikhail Bakunin, Pyotr Kropotkin) to individualist anarchism (Max Stirner). They effectively present some intersecting points when it comes to the critique of the law, such as the ways in which these different tendencies criticise law’s claim of authority, its demand for obedience and the creation of obligations which are incompatible with individual autonomy (pp. 2-10).

The subsequent chapter is perhaps one of the most interesting parts of the book, at least for researchers and students of legal theory. In chapter two, we encounter a refreshing reading of some of the most important legal theories of Anglo-American, analytic tradition, namely, legal positivism, natural law and legal realism. The jurisprudential discussions around these theories focus on their conflicting views on the nature and/or concept of law, the place of morality and the role of the judiciary in the process of law creation. Yet, such discussions are often obsolete or even explicitly uninterested in the place of the law in society and its central role in affecting our lives and our politics. Newman and La Torre approach them from a different perspective. Starting with legal positivism’s neutrality and separability thesis – law is neutral and separate from moral and political considerations – the authors, somehow ironically but correctly suggest that for a positivist, such as Kelsen, ‘even an anarchist could teach law, since legal theory can assume a strictly “pure”, neutral, form’ (p. 33). Yet, since legal positivism presupposes the existence of a sovereign who holds the power to posit the law – thus, the law justifies the idea of the monopoly of violence held by the sovereign – this cannot be compatible with an anarchist vision of the law (p. 35). Similarly, when it comes to natural law, they crucially point out that ‘natural law doctrines very often share with legal positivists the view of law as being based on coercion and force, whilst only adding a moral point to qualify such authoritarian social ontology’ (p. 35). Thus, its incompatibility with anarchism is evident. In the final part of the chapter, we encounter the first element of the instituting power of the law. Building on a radical understanding of the notion of institution, found in the works of Maurice Hauriou, Deleuze and Cornelius Castoriadis, the authors present an image of (anarchist) legal institutions as a cause of action and creation, without authority and coercion (pp. 48-51).

The following four chapters (three to six) build on both the destituting and instituting power of the law through the destruction of the old, hierarchical institutions and the formation of anarchist, creative ones. In chapter three, there is an interesting discussion of an alternative ontology of sovereignty – a ‘subversive one’ (p. 59). They develop this argument through Baruch Spinoza’s immanent philosophy that opposes the notion of a transcendent God Who stands above His creation. As such, in the next chapter, through an examination of Carl Schmitt’s attack on anarchism, the authors argue for the development of a non-foundational political theology (pp. 84-85). Ultimately, chapter six revisits the notion of ‘the state’ and argues for a reconceptualization of it. It supports a notion of a different sense of belonging in a community, where the state is seen as ‘a public institution of care’ (p. 130). Whilst it remains difficult to me to see how a state can be formed based on non-hierarchical relations, as, in my view, such relations presuppose the notion of the state, the argument presented here is persuasive. Perhaps, the disagreement is mainly a matter of terminology rather than political aspirations.

The last three chapters (seven to nine) focus on three integral concepts that shape the relationship between anarchism and law, namely violence, (dis)obedience and human rights. Unsurprisingly, the discussion of violence is focussed on Georges Sorel and Walter Benjamin and especially the latter’s ‘Critique of Violence’ and the distinction between ‘mythic violence’ which is law-creating and law-affirming and divine violence, which is law-destroying (pp. 138-148). The authors suggest that anarchism can propose a different kind of ‘violence against violence’ (p. 148), what we may call an insurrection as a tactic amongst others. In their discussion of (dis)obedience, the authors develop an original reading of Étienne La Boétie’s essay on voluntary servitude in order to develop an ontology of anarchy which argues that our disobedience can be an integral aspect for the disorientation of power and coercion (pp. 187-189). Finally, chapter nine focuses on an anarchist conception of human rights that are not based on universal ideas and foundational principles, such as a common notion of humanity, but are a process for the creation of ‘new modes of subjectivity, new ways of living, new ways of relating to others and to ourselves that are no longer tied to the liberal idea of the individual’ (p. 215). This is a thought-provoking take on human rights; however, I remain sceptical about any positive contribution that human rights can have to anarchist polity. This is because, unlike other forms of rights (e.g. political), human rights seem to be of a special kind. They are a strong ideological tool of depoliticization and pacification in the hands of the state, in its effort to present any radical alternative (including anarchism) as obsolete.

The Anarchist Before the Law is a magnificent book that will makes us think carefully about the relationship between anarchism and law. Anarchists both from within and outside academia should read and reread it as it will assist them to rethink their tactics and engagement with the law. Likewise, legal theorists will see their discipline from a unique perspective. Whilst I remain a pessimist as to whether the law can be salvaged in an emancipatory, radical project, I welcome the challenge from the authors. So, ‘let as [or, at least try to] think of law, then, as a practice of freedom’ (p. 226).