What I try to document here are some of the ways in which this reconstitutive ‘boundary-making’ is occurring in Hong Kong. Sometimes it occurs in the law courts, sometimes in official narratives and discourse, sometimes in culture and sometimes in fleeting metaphors and parables, insubstantial myths and rumours. All contribute to what Cohen calls the symbolic construction of a community.147 Paradoxically, however, I argue that though law and lawyers play their part in this construction, by elevating the rule of law to such a dominant cultural position, they may contribute to the disarming of democracy.