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Colin Perrin, "The Silent Responsibility of Law", International Journal for the Semiotics of Law / Revue Internationale de Sémiotique Juridique Vol. XI no.31 (1998), 39-47: Following Jacques Derrida's argument, from the first part of his 'Force of Law: 'The Mystical Foundation of Authority'', this research note takes up the problem of law's responsibility. Eliciting the background to Derrida's argument in his earlier work, ' we signify when the present cannot be presented'. And it is this responsibility that is considered here, in the relation between signification and presentation, through what Maurice Blanchot calls 'the silence of the word silence'. Law cannot be responsible. This word cannot be silent. But it is in the inadequacy of this word - in its inadequacy to 'itself - that it is silent because it speaks. And this is how silence is: in the passivity of a response that cannot be passive, and in the responsibility of a law that cannot be responsible. e-mail: s9701974@pop3.unsw.edu.au

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