In this article I reflect on some aspects of Baxi’s essay “Law and State-Regulated Capitalism in India” (1991). I wish to evoke, firstly, how Baxi’s critique of Indian law allows students to experience ‘negative thinking’ through its undermining of basic assumptions about law and the State. Secondly, I attempt to make sense of Baxi’s reference to ‘law’s illegalities’ by using Derrida’s conception of the impossibility of fixing the limit between the legal and the illegal, which is associated with the impossibility of justice itself. Finally, I offer a brief analysis of some technical aspects of Baxi’s writing style to show how the text’s powerful literary properties shape our experience of its argument.