Introduction

Martin Loughlin’s Foundations of Public Law offers a radical reworking of public law scholarship, converting it into an interdisciplinary enquiry into the political character of the state. Bringing public law into conceptual and discursive interplay with political theory, political sociology and state theory, Foundations explores the core legal-political relation as it evolves with the evolution of the modern state. The project raises a number of questions that are critically interrogated in this special issue. Does Foundations neglect the emancipatory and normative potential of public law? Does it fully capture the material forces at work in conditioning the evolution of the state and its law? Does public law, at least in its administrative branches, depend upon a foundation at all? And, at its most basic, is an enquiry into the foundations of public law misguided in light of the plurality of its forms?