‘The Great Divide in Legal Discourse’ serves as the opening chapter in an edited volume dedicated to the global rise of a new legal paradigm in the 19th century, i.e. legal positivism.  In it, Baudouin Dupret articulates an argument around the concept of ‘law’ within the Foucauldian ‘field of stabilisation and usage,’ while Gianluca Parolin sketches the trajectory of such a field (and the concept of ‘law’) in a case study—19th century Egypt.