Antigone,Autonomy,and Higher Lawlessness

The first surviving references to unwritten law and to autonomy come to us from Sophocles’ Antigone. Legal readings of the tragedy routinely focus on the contest between conflicting norms, like natural law and legal positivism. These readings typically assume the truth of Antigone’s claim that an unwritten Higher Law supersedes Creon’s decree. Yet after she is accused of acting autonomously, she abandons this Higher Law and appeals instead to a law she has made for herself. This article explores the danger that appeals to Higher Law in adjudication may encourage claims based in autonomy, self-determined law, amounting to “Higher Lawlessness.”