Christoph Menke is a third-generation Frankfurt School theorist, and widely acknowledged as one of the most interesting philosophers in Germany today. His lead essay focuses on the fundamental question for legal and political philosophy: the relationship between law and violence. The first part of the essay shows why and in what precise sense the law is irreducibly violent; the second part establishes the possibility of the law becoming self-reflectively aware of its own violence. The volume contains responses by Maria del Rosario Acosta Lopez, Daniel Loick, Alessandro Ferrara, Ben Morgan, Andreas Fischer-Lescano and Alexander Garcia Duttmann. It concludes with Menke's reply to his critics.