A Jurisprudence of Power Victorian Empire and the Rule of Law

Author: R.W. Kostal
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 9780199551941
Published In: September 2008
Format: Paperback
Jurisdiction: U.K. ? Disclaimer:
Countri(es) stated herein are used as reference only

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Analyses the most controversial imposition of martial law in Britian's colonies in the 19th century
Reveals the extent of unease at home over repression in the colonies
Examines the contradictions inherent in having a commitment to the rule of law whilst running an empire

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.

Readership: Historians, and scholars specializing in English legal and political history, the history of imperialism, the history of law, the rule of law, emergency law, and martial law.

Introduction
1: 'The Country of Law': Reconstructing the Morant Bay Uprising in England
2: 'The Blood that Testifies': The Jamaica Controversy in Jamaica
3: The Drawing Room Men: The Jamaica Controversy in 1866
4: The Tenets of Terror: Reinventing the Law of Martial Law
5: Marshalling Martial Law: Litigating the Jamaica Controversy
6: 'The Alphabet of Our Liberty': Chief Justice Cockburn in the Old Bailey
7: 'The Most-Law Loving People in the World': The denouement of the Jamaica litigation
Epilogue
Epilogue: Phillips v. Eyre and after
Conclusion
A Jurisprudence of Power: Law, Empire, and the Jamaica Controversy
Appendix: The Jamaica Controversy as Historiography
Index

Rande W. Kostal, Associate Professor of Law and History, University of Western Ontario

Review(s) 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

"...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

"..Kostal's arguments..are insightful, persuasive, and of read scholarly merit." - The Law and Politics Book Review

"..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

"...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

"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

"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."

"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

"[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