Hunt, Alan. Foucault and the Law: Towards a Sociology of Law as Governance. London: Pluto Press, 1994. 51-2.

Foucault’s account of the difference between law and discipline is at its sharpest where he draws this contrast between universal law and “counter-” or “infra-law,” involving an “infra-” or “micro-penalty” that takes possession of an area left empty or never colonized by the law, providing regulation for diverse types of behavior. These micro-penalties involve “offences” such as lateness, untidiness, disobedience, insolence. His point is that these wrongs are, on the one hand, so trivial as to be beneath the attention of law but, on the other, are the very stuff and heart of the modern disciplines.