Abstract
This essay offers eight theses in the style of Walter Benjamin's 'Theses on the Philosophy of History'. Law constructs time as linear, turns history into legal procedure and uses it to create the authorised record of the past, to legitimise the present and prevent radical change in the future. Heidegger's ontological and Benjamin's messianic conceptions of time can be used to undermine dominant legal temporality. But only a return to Athens and politics promises resistance and reconciliation.