Introduction to the relationship between law and politics -- Sovereignty -- The rule of law -- The 'inner morality of law' -- Rights -- Legalism and legality -- Citizenship -- Law, politics and globalisation -- Problems of the rule of law in political transitions -- The rule of law and the state of emergency -- Introduction to legal reasoning -- Legal formalism, legal realism and the open texture of law -- Three theories of legal reasoning -- Justice, natural law and the limits of rule following -- Equality, difference and domination -- Trials, facts and narratives -- Understanding discrimination -- Judging in an unjust society -- Law in modern society and legal modernity -- Formal legal rationality and legal modernity -- Dilemmas of modern law -- After modernity? -- Legal pluralism -- Juridification -- Law, ideology and legitimation -- Displacing the juridical -- Law in the risk society