Preface: before the law; Introduction: the rhetoric of law; Part I. The Boundaries of Legal Discourse: 1. The world of law: oratory and authority; 2. Legal violence and the limit of justice; Part II. The Legal Subject: 3. Legal fictions: subjects probable and improbable; 4. Logos biou: law's life stories; Part III. Time, Memory, Reproduction: Law's Past and Future: 5. Civic amnesia and legal memory: remembering and forgetting in the lawcourts; 6. Family/law: legal genealogies; Conclusion: the paradigmatic law.