THRASHING IN THE DWELLING‐HOUSE: Dwelling on the Threshold: Criticial Essays on Modern Legal Thought. By Allan C. Hutchinson
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2230.1989.tb02823.x |
| Published date | 01 March 1989 |
| Date | 01 March 1989 |
| Author | Costas Douzinas,Ronnie Warrington,Shaun McVeigh |
REVIEW ARTICLES
THRASHING
IN
THE DWELLING-HOUSE
DWELLING
ON
THE
THRESHOLD:
CRITICIAL
ESSAYS
ON
MODERN
LEGAL
THOUGHT.
By ALLAN C. HUTCHINSON [Toronto and London:
The Carswell Company Ltd and Sweet
&
Maxwell Limited,
1988.
iii
and
321
pp.
f30.00,
hardback]
The pious only wish’d “the devil take them!”
He
took them not; he often waits,
And leaves old sinners to be young ones’ baits.
(Byron
:
Beppo)
1.
A
tale
of
Heaven and Hell:
why
the devil has the best lines
ACCORDING to Ronald Dworkin’ we are all subject to the imperial
rule
of
law-we live in the House of Law. This means that a
prescription is imposed upon us (from where presumably only God
knows) which binds us to dwell not in the House
of
the Lord, but
under the aegis
of
the next best thing, the House
of
Lords. It
behoves the priestesses and priests
of
this Temple to behave with
the decorum, solemnity and above all respect that such a rare
atmosphere demands.
But there are some initiates around who are ungrateful enough
to reject this dwelling, this eternal palace. Various shades
of
dissent have insidiously crept into the heavenly host (was St Peter
asleep when he let them in?). These malcontents seem far from
happy with the Temple. If God destroyed the Tower
of
Babel
because human beings were getting too close to His own dwelling,
then this collection
of
devils seem bent on destroying the palace
built in God’s own image. It is not quite clear what the malcontents
want. Some want only to repair the Temple; others want to destroy
what exists and simply dance in the ruins; still others wish to tear
to the ground the existing Temple and build a new one. For
Hutchinson, some sort
of
rebuilding is essential. As he asks: ‘“11s
there nothing more to social life than an unmitigated crawling and
stumbling through the ruins
of
some architectural indulgence
of
earlier hegemonic imaginings that we have demolished
.
.
.?”
(p.263)* Yet, as Milton discovered, the Archangel and his crew are
a pretty dull lot; to make paradise worth losing Satan has to have
the best lines.
The cloven-footed, with whom Hutchinson associates, pass under
the grandiose and self-granted title of Critical Legal Scholars.
Hutchinson’s collection
of
essays
is
a sustained attempt to present a
~~ ~ ~
I
Ronald, Dworkin, Law’s
Empire
(1986).
*
Allan Hutchinson,
Dwelling
on
the Threshold
etc;
all future page references in the
text are
to
this work.
261
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