The image of law: Deleuze, Bergson, Spinoza

This dissertation takes the thought of Gilles Deleuze within the context of jurisprudence in order to develop a theory of adjudication in which judgment is inherently creative. The dissertation is divided into three parts, each of which corresponds to a major interlocutor of Deleuze. Part I is critical and identifies Immanuel Kant as the inspiration of a major tradition of contemporary legal theory which takes judgment as subsumptive: to cover cases with rules. The consequence of seeing judgment as subsumptive, I argue, is that creativity in law is framed as extrinsic to judgment and in principle eliminable. Part II focuses mainly on Henri Bergson's theory of perception and time in order to develop two different processes of judgment that spring from one and the same source---what we call the 'actualization of the past.' Both processes are necessary and irreducible kinds of judgment: the first accounts for the rule-applying function of adjudication; the second for the rule-creating function of adjudication. Part III examines three themes from Baruch Spinoza as they find expression in Deleuze in order to formulate a practice that corresponds to the awareness that judgment is sometimes unavoidably creative, and, as such, must be affirmed.; Keywords. Deleuze, Bergson, Kant, Spinoza, adjudication jurisprudence, judgment, law, time, encounter...