E P Thompson on the rule of law & class power
The late socialist historian E P Thompson wrote a book, Whigs and Hunters, about the State’s war with poachers in the eighteenth century. It was perhaps as much about common land, and the rights of the less well-off and the poor to use it, and how the law viewed this.
Thompson drew some general lessons about the law which he pursued in the 1980s. He argued that the law could not just be dismissed as a tool of the rich (although it was) but had to be engaged and argued with.
A key passage from Whigs and Hunters explains his view of the contradictions involved in this process.
We reach then, not a simple conclusion (law=class power) but a complex and contradictory one. On the one hand.. the law did mediate existent class relations to the advantage of the rulers; not only is this so, but as the century advanced the law became a superb instrument by which these rulers were able to impose new definitions of property to their even greater advantage.. On the other hand the law mediated these class relations through legal forms, which imposed again and again, inhibitions upon the actions of these rulers
Something to keep in mind when it comes to the decisions of the International Criminal Court and the US and UK Governments perhaps
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