Promoting Dialogue Between History and Socio‐legal Studies: The Contribution of Christopher W. Brooks and the ‘Legal Turn’ in Early Modern English History
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/jols.12048 |
| Author | David Sugarman |
| Published date | 01 October 2017 |
| Date | 01 October 2017 |
JOURNAL OF LAW AND SOCIETY
VOLUME 44, ISSUE S1, OCTOBER 2017
ISSN: 0263-323X, pp. S37±S60
Promoting Dialogue Between History and Socio-legal
Studies: The Contribution of Christopher W. Brooks and the
`Legal Turn' in Early Modern English History
David Sugarman*
Although history, legal history, and socio-legal studies significantly
overlap in concerns, methods, values and history, and a common
tradition, these commonalities are frequently overlooked. In seeking to
promote greater dialogue between these disciplines, this article
examines their complex interaction, arguing that the work of socio-
legal scholars, historians, and legal historians would benefit from
greater cross-fertilization. It focuses on the `legal turn' in recent history
writing on early modern England, particularly Christopher W. Brooks's
ground-breaking analysis of the nature and extent of legal conscious-
ness throughout society, and the central role of law and legal institutions
in the constitution of society. It then outlines some areas of common
interest and, having highlighted the increasing convergence between
history, legal history, and socio-legal studies, concludes that greater
dialogue would enhance our understanding of the role of law in society,
and of society, and would be of more than mere historical interest.
I.
Socio-legal studies is embedded in a cluster of social practices and relations
sustained by many disciplines. Within this broad church, history has always
been an important strand, although the linkages between history and socio-
legal studies are complex and paradoxical. Socio-legal studies was
constituted against the dominant tradition of legal education and scholarship,
S37
*Law School, Lancaster University, Lancaster LA1 4YN, England
d.sugarman@lancaster.ac.uk
My thanks go to Susan Bartie, Adrian Green, Richard Moorhead, and Wilfrid Prest for
valuable comments on earlier versions of this article, to Jir
ÏõÂPr
Ï
ibaÂn
Ïfor his encouragement,
and to LeÂonie Sugarman for her editorial assistance. Sharyn Brooks kindly provided
valuable details concerning her late husband's life. This essay is dedicated to the memory
of John Beattie (1932±2017), doyen of the history of crime, criminal justice, and policing,
and a much-loved friend and colleague.
ß2017 The Author. Journal of Law and Society ß2017 Cardiff University Law School
with its focus on the principles of law, and that vein of legal history
preoccupied with the genealogy of legal doctrine. Doctrinal legal history,
and the use of the past by lawyers (who are, among other things, historians),
attracted the suspicion of socio-legal scholars in that it underpinned and
legitimated a preoccupation with the narrow technicalities of the law and the
treatment of law as largely divorced from the society, politics, and economy
in which it operated. Given the implicit hope that socio-legal scholarship
would identify, and therefore bolster, movements that might `change society
through law', and that the past was replete with things that we should be
leaving behind with the march of progress, the moral was clear: the less
history the better. Hence, some `law in context' and other legal scholarship
texts explicitly set their sights on the present, and against the past.
1
However, many socio-legal scholars embraced and were inspired by
history, especially social history. They were energized by history's reading
of law as a social, political, and cultural formation that could only be
understood over time; the contingency of particular legal arrangements; that
ordinary people contributed by their conscious efforts to the making of
history; and that law and legal practices were systematically structured by
economic, cultural, and political power, thereby reinstating facets of the past
that were otherwise marginalized. That E.P. Thompson, the doyen of social
history and a lion of the political left, identified law as the locus of political
contention
2
was not without irony, as some of his comrades noted.
3
But it
was music to the ears of critical and socio-legal scholars, and legal activists,
justifying what they did. At `a practice level', Thompson's message to his
readers was `. . . Go to Law School'.
4
Deciphering the relationship between history and socio-legal studies
necessitates addressing institutional factors and interests as well as ideas.
The modern disciplines of law, history, and socio-legal studies were in
important respects constituted against each other, and as separate from one
another. They were com petitors ± for academic legiti macy, cultural
authority, student numbers, and material support ± making boundary
maintenance part of their raison d'etre.
5
S38
1 R. Cocks, `History in Eclipse?' in The Life of the Law, ed. P. Birks (1993) 257.
2 E.P. Thompson, Whigs and Hunters (1975) 258±69.
3 P. Linebaugh, `From the Upper West Side to Wick Episcopi' (1993) 201 New Left
Rev. 18, at 23.
4 id., p. 24.
5 The existence of law faculties in England staffed by academics, and principally
concerned with teaching the indigenous system, dates from c.1850 onwards. The
scale of operations was small until the expansion of higher education after the
Second World War, and especially from the mid-1960s onwards. The academic
discipline of history is similarly of recent vintage, but, unlike law, it rapidly
succeeded in attracting large student numbers and cultural capital. Although history
remained important in law, and vice versa, their interplay was rendered problematic
by the drive to establish wholly independent academic subjects, specialization,
professionalization, and a scientific model of intellectual work.
ß2017 The Author. Journal of Law and Society ß2017 Cardiff University Law School
To continue reading
Request your trial