Reading judgment and case law is a typical exercise within common law scholarship. Yet, although the interpretation of judgment forms a central mode of legal science in the common law tradition, a theoretical account of the authority that attaches to the aesthetic of judgment within this tradition remains more marginal. This article argues that the authority of judgment can be assessed less productively through an attention to its outcomes, reasons and rationalisations than through the technological problems of jurisdiction and with what one can call its 'procedural forms'. While the jurisdiction of federal courts to issue 'interim control orders' against persons for the purpose of preventing a terrorist act in Australia was affirmed in the High Court case of Thomas v Mowbray, one question remaining from this case is how the procedure of 'control' itself might shape the legal authority of adjudication.