Jurisprudence Of Power: Victorian Empire And The Rule Of Law Paperback

R. W. Kostal

A jurisprudence of power concerns the brutal suppression under martial law of the jamaica uprising of 1865, and the explosive debate and litigation these events spawned in england. The book explores the centrality of legal ideas and institutions in english politics, and of political ideas that give rise to great questions of english law. It documents how the world's most powerful and articulate political elite struggled to define its soul, and poses penetrating questions such as can an imperial nation remain committed to laws and legality? Can it contend with the violent resistance of subjugated peoples without corrupting the integrity of its legal and political ideals? The book addresses these questions as it reconstructs the most prolonged and important conflict over martial law and the rule of law in the history of england in the nineteenth century

0199551944

9780199551941

English

Oxford University Press

15 December 2008

560

R.W. Kostal is an Associate Professor of Law and History at the University of Western Ontario. His research focuses on the history of modern law and society in England and the United States. His first book, Law and English Railway Capitalism 1825-1875, was awarded the Ferguson Prize of the Canadian Historical Association in 1995

[an] excellent book...[that] is an important injection of law into both the imperial history and british political history of the late-nineteenth century. * the cambridge law journal * a jurisprudence of power offers a richly textured and carefully nuanced study of the oft-quoted 'rule of law', ...Drawing on an impressive and diverse range of published and manuscript sources, and presented in crisp and compelling prose,a jurisprudence of power exposes the contradictions which threatened the application of english law in a colonial context....Kostal has..Made a significant contribution to the history of english law. * canadian historical association * the book makes a significant contribution to both victorian and imperial historiography. [it] is based on remarkable historical and legal research that synthesizes law and history in brilliant fashion. I have no hesitation in saying that professor kostal is among the very best scholars of the legal history of the victorian era. [he is] a legal historian who is an exhaustive researcher. The breadth of the material he interrogates is quite astounding prodigious and thorough.' * professor john mclaren * ...Much that is revealing emerges in kostal s tracing of these events...Arguably the most important thing about the jamaica committee was not its methods or their outcome but its crystallisation of a clutch of issues which have changed in shape but not in essence in the intervening years. Law and order are still not the same thing. * lord justice stephen sedley, london review of books * ..A brilliantly timed monograph..It provides a wonderful way into the actual operation of the law of empire and that law's troubled place in anglo-american constitutionalism..Helps to make sense of critical features of twenty-first century american legal debates. Kostal's book does this beautifully. It deserves a large audience. * john witt, harvard law review * ..Kostal's arguments..Are insightful, persuasive, and of read scholarly merit. * the law and politics book review * ...Much that is revealing emerges in kostal's tracing of these events...Arguably the most important thing about the jamaica committee was not its methods or their outcome but its crystallisation of a clutch of issues which have changed in shape but not in essence in the intervening years. Law and order are still not the same thing. * lord justice stephen sedley, london review of books * review from previous edition ..Rande kostal's justification for entering this well-ploughed historical field is to move the law to the centre of the stage...This he does superbly by painstaking research and analysis, displaying mastery of archival sources and the written word. Indeed, kostal succeeds so well that at times one starts to believe that the law is not just centre stage but the entire stage...A distinguished contribution..A jurisprudence of power deserves a wide readership * michael taggart, modern law review