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This article seeks to recover and uncover the non-utilitarian excess (jouissance) in crime and punishment since Kant. Jouissance is sharply contrasted with Nietzsche’s account of ressentiment. The latter is analyzed as the predominant sensation of our penal system which until today structures the subjects and institutions of punishment from within. Jouissance, on the other hand, is obscured in philosophies of punishment that attempt to account for the will to punish but ultimately fail to cover over the excess that constitutes penal theories and practices. Whether it is visible in Kant’s punitive fervor, in the exploration of perversion in de Sade and E. A. Poe, in theories of deterrence and prevention or punitive convictions in our contemporary legal culture, Freud’s discovery of a realm beyond the pleasures principle remains crucial for the understanding of the motives for crime and punishment. The essay concludes with a discussion of Nietzsche and his exploration of the ramifications of recognizing the role of new affects in crime and punishment.

The figure of the “Kafkaesque” in law serves often as a stand-in for something like “perverted justice” and ranks prominently among the legal profession as a whole. But we should not soothe ourselves with such obvious clichés surrounding the “Kafkaesque,” rather we must continue to pursue the disturbing challenge Kafka poses for the analysis of the law. It is clear that Kafka’s texts hit a certain nerve of modern law that reaches well beyond these familiar punchlines. It is the task of this article to uncover some of the reasons why Kafka strikes such a strong cord with both legal scholars and people outside of academia alike.

Examines Eastern Europe’s struggle to privatise since the end of Communism; in particular reports on the experiences of Poland, Czechoslovakia and Russia. The danger of fast privatisation without restructuring is demonstrated by Czechoslovakia’s experience. Poland shows the importance of employing tight budget constraints. Russia demonstrates that privatisation in chaos is unlikely to produce real change.

The recent process of the transition to market systems in the Central European economies has had profound effects on both trade and domestic output. Two of the by‐products of the transition, the fall in the volume of intra‐COMECON trade as well as the deliberate tightening of the fiscal stance in the economies of these countries, have contributed significantly to a fall in the level of manufacturing output, particularly in the case of the former Czechoslovakia. Examines the implications of the behaviour of the trade account and of government fiscal policy for the domestic manufacturing sector in former Czechoslovakia between 1990 and 1992. Industrial restructuring was extreme, leading to increased reliance on imports: however, the contraction in the manufacturing sector may have kept wages pressures and inflation low, as well as attracting foreign investment, leading to a relatively successful transition for the Czech Republic.