Equitable relief as a relay between juridical and biopower

the case of school desegregation

Gordon Hull

pp. 225-248

in: Continental Philosophy Review 50 (2), 2017.

Abstract

The present paper looks at the intersection of juridical and biopower in the U.S. Supreme Court's school desegregation cases. These cases generally deploy "equitable relief" as a relay between the juridicially-specified injury of segregation and the biopolitical mandates of integration, allowing broad-based biopolitical remedies for juridically identified problems. This strategy enabled the Courts to negotiate between these forms of power. The analysis here thus suggests the continued relevance of juridical power, and also the limits of Foucault's own analysis, which suggested that biopower tended to fully colonize juridical power by way of norms.