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systematism justifies and organizes
    functionally, emphasizing the totalizing character of the process.
    What juridical model, however, grasps all these characteristics of
    the new supranational order?
    In first attempting a definition, we would do well to recognize
    that the dynamics and articulations ofthe new supranational juridical
    order correspond strongly to the new characteristics that have come
    to define internal orderings in the passage from modernity to post-
    modernity.25 We should recognize this correspondence (perhaps in
    Kelsen’s manner, and certainly in a realistic mode) not so much as
    a ‘‘domestic analogy’’ for the international system, but rather as a
    ‘‘supranational analogy’’ for the domestic legal system. The primary
    characteristics ofboth systems involve hegemony over juridical
    practices, such as procedure, prevention, and address. Normativity,
    sanction, and repression follow from these and are formed within the
    procedural developments. The reason for the relative (but effective)
    coincidence ofthe new functioning ofdomestic law and suprana-
    tional law derives first of all from the fact that they operate on the
    same terrain, namely, the terrain ofcrisis. As Carl Schmitt has taught
    us, however, crisis on the terrain ofthe application oflaw should
    focus our attention on the ‘‘exception’’ operative in the moment
    ofits production.26 Domestic and supranational law are both defined
    by their exceptionality.
    The function of exception here is very important. In order
    to take control ofand dominate such a completely fluid situation,
    it is necessary to grant the intervening authority (1) the capacity to
    W O R L D O R D E R
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    define, every time in an exceptional way, the demands ofinterven-
    tion; and (2) the capacity to set in motion the forces and instruments
    that in various ways can be applied to the diversity and the plurality
    ofthe arrangements in crisis. Here, therefore, is born, in the name
    ofthe exceptionality ofthe intervention, a form ofright that is
    really a right of the police. The formation of a new right is inscribed in the deployment ofprevention, repression, and rhetorical force
    aimed at the reconstruction ofsocial equilibrium: all this is proper
    to the activity ofthe police. We can thus recognize the initial and
    implicit source ofimperial right in terms ofpolice action and the
    capacity ofthe police to create and maintain order. The legitimacy
    ofthe imperial ordering supports the exercise ofpolice power, while
    at the same time the activity ofglobal police force demonstrates the
    real effectiveness of the imperial ordering. The juridical power to
    rule over the exception and the capacity to deploy police force
    are thus two initial coordinates that define the imperial model
    ofauthority.
    Universal Values
    We might well ask at this point, however, should we still use the
    juridical term ‘‘right’’ in this context? How can we call right (and
    specifically imperial right) a series oftechniques that, founded on
    a state ofpermanent exception and the power ofthe police, reduces
    right and law to a question of pure effectiveness? In order to address
    these questions, we should first look more closely at the process of
    imperial constitution that we are witnessing today. We should
    emphasize from the start that its reality is demonstrated not only
    by the transformations of international law it brings about, but also
    by the changes it effects in the administrative law of individual
    societies and nation-states, or really in the administrative law of
    cosmopolitical society.27 Through its contemporary transformation
    ofsupranational law, the imperial process ofconstitution tends either
    directly or indirectly to penetrate and reconfigure the domestic
    law ofthe nation-states, and thus supranational law powerf
    ully
    overdetermines domestic law.
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    T H E P O L I T I C A L C O N S T I T U T I O N O F T H E P R E S E N T
    Perhaps the most