LAW n+sources

" the three main sources from which Agamben construes his notion of law: Carl Schmitt, Walter Benjamin, and Franz Kafka. Whereas Schmitt unveils the true nature of the law in the exception, Benjamin shows its intimate connection to violence, and Kafka describes its emptiness and self-referentiality; from these three sources Agamben construes the picture of a law that ‘presupposes itself, retrospectively legitimating its own, non-legal, foundation and establishing a circle in which law’s authority stems from law itself’.12 This circular structure is what must be de-activated and rendered inoperative, and Benjamin and Kafka also offer a redemptive route in their profane messianism."

‘The Sentence is the Goal’: Agamben’s Notion of Law
Carlo Salzani