The present paper puts forward a first outline of a possible agonistic theory of adjudication, conceived of as an extension of Chantal Mouffe’s agonistic theory of democracy onto the domain of the juridical, and specifically, judicial decision-making. Mouffe’s concept of the political as the dimension of inherent and unalienable conflicts (antagonisms) which, nonetheless, need to be tamed for a pluralist democracy to function, creates an excellent vantage point for a critical theory of adjudication. The paper argues for perceiving all judicial decisions as having a double nature—juridical and political. Cloaked in legal form, judgments nonetheless decide on individual instances of on-going collective conflicts, opposing workers to employers, consumers to traders, tenants to landlords, moral progressives to traditionalists, minorities to majorities and so forth. Judges, when handing down judgments, enjoy a ‘relative sovereignty’, being always already inscribed into the institutional imperatives of the juridical, on one hand, and ideological influences, on the other, but at the same time called upon to decide in the terrain of the undecidable and contingent (after all, law does not ‘apply itself’ on its own). Indeed the determinacy of legal decisions is only relative: in many cases judges can, by performing a sufficient amount of legal interpretive work, reach a conclusion which will be different from the prima facie interpretation. The collective conflicts of a various nature (economic, ideological, socio-political), once they are juridified, become the object of judicial decisions which, in light of Mouffe’s theory, can be seen as temporary hegemonic fixations. The goal of critical legal scholarship is to destabilise such hegemonies in the name of justice. This can be done not only through an external critique of the law, but also through an internal one. The methodological approach advanced in the latter part of the paper emphasises the need for a critique of judicial decisions based on the consideration of all possible alternative decisions a court could have reached, and their evaluation in the light of conflicting interests and ideologies.

本文提出了一种可能的审判激动论的第一个纲要，认为是Chantal Mouffe的民主激动论延伸到司法领域，尤其是司法决策领域。穆菲的政治概念是固有的和不可消除的冲突（对抗）的维度，尽管如此，仍需要加以驯服，以使多元民主国家发挥作用，这为批判性审判理论创造了一个绝佳的有利位置。该论文主张认为所有司法判决具有司法和政治双重性质。依法掩盖法律，但判决仍针对个别持续的集体冲突，工人与雇主，消费者与商人，住户与房东，道德进步主义者对传统主义者，少数到多数等等。法官在作出判决时享有“相对主权”，一方面总是被列入司法的制度要件中，另一方面又受到意识形态的影响，但同时又要求在地势上作出决定犹豫不决和偶然的情况（毕竟，法律并不能“自行适用”）。的确，法律判决的确定性只是相对的：在许多情况下，法官可以通过进行足够的法律解释工作来得出结论，该结论与法院的结论是不同的。但同时又要求在不确定性和偶然性的领域中做出决定（毕竟，法律并不能“自行适用”）。的确，法律判决的确定性只是相对的：在许多情况下，法官可以通过进行足够的法律解释工作来得出结论，该结论与法院的结论是不同的。但同时又要求在不确定性和偶然性的领域中做出决定（毕竟，法律并不能“自行适用”）。的确，法律判决的确定性只是相对的：在许多情况下，法官可以通过进行足够的法律解释工作来得出结论，该结论与法院的结论是不同的。初步的解释。一旦将各种性质的集体冲突（经济的，意识形态的，社会政治的）冲突化，它们便成为司法裁决的对象，根据穆菲的理论，这可以看作是暂时的霸权主义注视。批判性法律奖学金的目的是以正义的名义破坏这种霸权。这不仅可以通过对法律的外部批判来完成，而且可以通过内部的法律来批判。本文后半部分提出的方法论方法强调，有必要基于对法院可能已经达成的所有可能替代性判决的考虑，对司法判决进行批判，并根据利益和意识形态的冲突对其进行评估。