In this sphere, in contract law that is, the moral conceptual world “guilt,” “conscience,” “duty,” “sacredness of duty” has its genesis—its beginning, like the beginning of everything great on earth, was thoroughly and prolongedly drenched in blood. And might one not add that this world has in essence never again entirely lost a certain odor of blood…?
–Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morality
Law does not grow by syllogistic compulsion; it is pushed by the social logic of domination and challenge to domination, forged in the interaction of change and resistance to change. It is not only in the common law that the life of the law is experience, not logic. Behind all law is someone’s story—someone whose blood, if you read closely, leaks through the lines.
–Catharine MacKinnon, Crimes of War, Crimes of Peace
