This special issue of the Swiss Journal of Social and Cultural Anthropology on “The law of the outlaw: Law and order with, within, and beyond criminal groups” examines the relationship between the law and different types of criminal and criminalised groups. While anthropology has produced a large body of work on legal issues, little research has been done on the relationship between the law as a heuristic category and criminal groups such as gangs, mafias or triads. Most representations of these criminal groups tend to see them as outlaws, often in active opposition to the established order. This special issue brings together contributions from two different academic traditions, the Francophone and Anglophone, which reflect on the relationship between the law and criminal groups in a different way. The bilingual introduction to the special issue reviews these two different legal anthropology traditions, before situating the way in which the law of the outlaw has been apprehended, and highlighting the potential contribution its study can make to the development of a pragmatic approach to law.