Book Review: English Lawyers Between Market and State: The Politics of Professionalism
| Author | Andrew Francis |
| Published date | 01 September 2005 |
| Date | 01 September 2005 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/096466390501400307 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
once told me that Herbert Hart said that he quite liked my book, but ‘MacCormick
makes me out to be more of a natural lawyer than I am’ (or words to that effect). For
my part I have steadily grown to be less of a positivist than I was, partly through
reflection on the moral basis of law’s positivity. Hart’s later thoughts took him yet
more firmly into a descriptive positivism than I would have hoped to see. I am not
sorry that I put his moral insights at the front of my shop in H.L.A. Hart, and
rounded up the story with them as well, for they remain to me the brightest blades
in his formidable armoury. One welcome confirmation I receive in reading Lacey’s
Hart is the revelation how very important they were to him too.
REFERENCES
Hart, H. L. A. (1961) The Concept of Law, 2nd edn. Postscript edited by J. Raz and
P. Bulloch (1994). Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Hart, H. L. A. (1963) Law, Liberty, and Morality.London: Oxford University Press.
MacCormick, Neil (1981) H.L.A. Hart. London: Edward Arnold.
NEIL MACCORMICK
University of Edinburgh, UK
R. ABEL, English Lawyers Between Market and State: The Politics of Professionalism.
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004, 731 pp., £30 (hbk).
The English legal profession has faced turmoil over the past 20 years, caught between
competing pressures from market and state. This is the central theme of Richard Abel,
returning to the subject that he addressed in The English Legal Profession (1988). That
book applied Larson’s theoretical framework from The Rise of Professionalism to
conceptualize the professional project of barristers and solicitors in England and
Wales as one of market control and status gain. Central to his conclusions was the
idea that legal professionalism is historically specific and the changes that he envis-
aged the professions facing would lead to the decline of professionalism. Abel returns
to the English legal professions to explore how the political and professional reper-
cussions from the publication of (Conservative Lord Chancellor) Lord Mackay’s
Green Papers on legal services in 1988 undermined the tacit understandings upon
which professionalism rests. Given the size of the book and the space available, I will
provide a brief overview of the book before drawing out a few further points for
discussion.
Abel deserves praise for what will surely turn out to be the definitive resource for
scholars of this period of the history of the legal professions. Central to the book’s
thesis is that politicians from both Labour and Conservative Governments ripped up
the ‘social contract’ that the profession had with the state. The book thus begins with
an overview of party politics and the ease with which politicians from both parties
felt able to enter battle with traditional allies or embrace contradictory ideologies.
Following a detailed summary of Lord Mackay’s proposals and the subsequent legis-
lation, the book follows a framework familiar to readers of Abel’s previous work,
with chapters exploring the ways in which the producers (lawyers) sought to control
entry to the profession, struggled to retain the social homogeneity of old, attempted
to control competition and the clashes between profession and government on issues
surrounding legal aid and regulation of the profession. The book concludes with a
BOOK REVIEWS 435
06 055692 Reviews (bc-s) 12/7/05 3:25 pm Page 435
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