In the spirit of weber 253 wealth, power and status gitimate themselves.’-^-'’ Thus, the supposed failures of the English legal system can also be read as assets, as symptoms of strength, as a large repertoire of solutions.”'-'’^ A few examples might clarify what I mean. Cain’s empirical study of the organisation of barristers explored the relative autonomy of the bar and bench and the advantages this afforded bar and bench. “The peculiarly circumscribed patronage system[of the bar] ... in which both prestige and material rewards are distributed with no reference to external assessors or criteria of judgment, both encourages individuals to intellectual compliance, and makes possible unitary thinking on technical issues. The corollary of this structure is that judges and barristers are relatively less influenced by the variety of immediate personal and situational pressures to which they may be subjected in other aspects of their lives. Maintenance of the unity of legal thought is contingent upon their being impervious to the various day-to-day rationality’s of other sections of the population. They are necessarily out of touch.”’57 In other words, the archaic social organisation of the bar helps barristers to achieve internal consistency in terms of the bar’s own ideology. Recently, the notion of lawas a science anda mystery has begun to be taken up by historians and theorists seeking connections between writing, knowledge and power in ways that seem very fruitful. For instance, Clanchy’s work has shown how the existence of law in written formenabled the law to appear as above and beyond the individual acts of power involved in its application. Writing, as Goodrich stresses, arrogated power to a class of lawyers claiming special expertise in the “interpretation” of the law.’-5“^ This suggests that we should look to “the social appropriation of knowledge, and the material practices in which it is inscribed.”’5° Hay has illuminated the functions of inconsistency anc] irrationality within the criminal law c)f eighteenth century England. The gentry’s tenacious oppc")- sition to the “rationalist” and “humanitarian” schemes of the reformers was significantly informed by the functional virtues of the ancien regime as thev saw it. The incoherence of the criminal law, with its interplay of justice, mercy and terror, was perceived as one which worked in their own interests.’^’ See Rubinstein, op. cit., pp. 71-2. Johnson, op. eit., p. 61, turning the supposed “failures” of the middle classes (as detailed bv Perry Anderson) on their heads. In his account, the)- become “assets”, “strengths” and “solutions”. M. Cain, “Necessarily Out of Touch”, in p. Carlen, (ed.) op. cit., pp. 226-47. M. Clanchy, From Memory to Record, (London; Methuen, 1978). P. Goodrich, Reading the Law, (Oxford: Blackwell. 1986). Editorial, “Science, Rationality and Religion”, op. cit., p. 3. For a valuable instance, see Ginsberg, op. cit., passim. Hay, op. cit., passim. Steve Redhead has detailed the way in which English football grounds have increasingly served to demonstrate state power as football supporters are treated as criminals: S. Redhead, Sing When You’re Winning, (London: Pluto Press, 1987). a system whereby certain groups maintain and le158 138 18
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