‘Ce Qui Arrive’: Deconstruction, Invention and the Legal Subject of R V R

Abstract

Acknowledging Jacques Derrida’s insistent claim that deconstruction ‘happens’ as a metaphysical occurrence, this article seeks to examine deconstruction’s happening to law. Through an examination of the English criminal law case R. v R [1992] 1 A. C. 599 the article seeks to investigate deconstruction’s happenings with regards to the origins, fictions, exceptions, inventions and potentialities found within the case. Tracing Matthew Hale’s performative utterance regarding marital immunity from rape through common law history the article questions the significance of deconstruction’s workings in the case. Inquiring further into the case’s disclosure of fictional origins, instances of exceptional affirmation and moments of emancipatory feminist potential, the article then asks if the case is illustrative of the radical potential inherent in deconstruction’s metaphysics for creating ‘true’ invention in law.