Well then we have to look at the meanings of contradiction[s] from the Leibnizian-Hegelian-Whiskerite genealogy; the non-compossibility of conflicting projects, goals, values, norms etc. that exist in any complex society. The law as practice cannot aspire to the kind of non-contradiction we find, in, say, mathematics or mathematical physics. In those disciplines non-contradiction is aspired to/achieved only with the humbling recognition of incompleteness; we live in a spacetime that is Goedelian at the very least. The "law" is always incomplete and exhibits only local consistencies; historico-contextually situated resolutions that never "finally" achieve permanence, nor the sort metahistorical "there is nothing further to dispute" "equilibrium". Tragedy/Irony in an open ended play/dance/battle of signifiers.
Ian
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All ironies asside, I didn't really want to get into this, but it is no accident that the applications of this rational doctrine as foundational positions in logic, law and mathematics are historically constructed from the Enlightenment, and lead at the very beginning of the 19c to the impossibility of fullfilling their diverse programs.
Obviously the Terror and then Empire can be seen as the range from tyranny to totalitarian experiment as the terminal phases of this doctrine carried out in society. But the conceptual equivalence (ignoring for the moment there are no such equivalence relations) can be found exactly in mathematics. Specifically the idea of the arithmeticization or rationalization of the calculus begins with the early enlightenment (Euler, D'Alembert, Lagrange). It is then brought to an indecisive juncture by the next generation in Arbogast and Carnot, contemporaries to the revolution and terror, then pasted over by Bolzano and Cauchy, during the afterglow of the empire. The periods and movement roughly correspond to their philosophical and political equivalents.
It's late (2:30a) so I'll it there.
Chuck Grimes