The capillary level of power : methods and hypotheses for the study of law and society in late-nineteenth century Victoria, British Columbia
Date
1988
Authors
Parker, Nancy Kay
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Abstract
This study of the police and police magistrate's court in late-nineteenth-century Victoria. British Columbia. has two mandates . Its methodological arguments stress the importance of integrating legal and social history approaches in understanding law at the level of enforcement. The micro-study framework helps demonstrate the importance of understanding the provenance of sources before generating hypotheses from legal records. The second aim of the study is to offer an explanation of how law maintains its authority in an urban milieu.
From the current literature in the field. three themes were selected for examination. First. the nature of laws authority was defined in terms of a balance between coercion and ideology. The contours of that ideology were found in the related expression of "majesty . justice and mercy." Because law is a vital aspect of the ideology of the state. changes to the institutional structure should encompass a corresponding shift in the contours of the ideology of law. Second. during the late-nineteenth century, North American cities underwent a process of modernization . This transformation gave rise to increasing attachments to "democratic. bureaucratic and rational" expressions of state power. Expansion of the role of urban governments and of the police underscored those attachments. Third , within the network of law itself the dichotomy between discretion and legal formalism is a significant agent of change.
Part One focuses on the institutional and social contexts of law enforcement in Victoria . The transformation of the police force from quasi-military adjuncts of the colonial government to a vital part of the urban bureaucracy can be viewed as a step in the modernization of the state. However. these changes did not progress in a linear fashion. Thus it is possible to apprehend two separate conceptions of the ideology of law within the same statutory framework. The need for a legitimating ideology can be demonstrated through the class-based structure of enforcement. Law was administered by members of the ruling elite while convicts were overwhelmingly members of the labouring classes.
Part Two offers a close examination of routinely-generated sources available in both published and manuscript forms. The collection and publication of "moral statistics" and reforms to disciplinary mechanisms were both aspects of the shifting contours of the ideology of law. Personal aspects of "majesty" diffused under the bureaucratic regime. The concepts of a rational and democratic state profoundly influenced the public face of law. One of the most direct expressions of this shift in ideology was the adoption of measurements of the "criminal classes." The self-sustaining racial and ethnic designations of the criminal classes would help to obscure the economic basis of social divisions.