On Law, Ideology, and Violence: A Reply to Maciej Pichlak

The present paper is a reaction to Maciej Pichlak’s article Law in the Snares of the Political: Addressing Rafał Mańko’s Critical Philosophy of Adjudication which was published in this journal (“The Critique of Law” 2020, 12(3), pp. 109–125). The present response addresses selected issues raised in Pichlak’s critique, focusing on three aspects: law and the political, the importance of justice in the critical project, and finally the question of adjudication and ideology. On a more general note, the polemic reveals the importance of philosophical, political and ideological commitments and presuppositions of legal theorists and poses the question of the limits of the autonomy of jurisprudential debates vis-à-vis such commitments.