Political Communication and Political Culture in England, 1558-1688 by Shapiro Barbara J.;

Author:Shapiro, Barbara J.;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Published: 2012-04-10T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER NINE

Law, Politics and the Legal System

The requirements that trials be public and by jury are typically, and quite rightly, presented as safeguards of individual liberty. They are, however, also something else. They entail dramatic presentations of the power of the state and of the limitations on the exercise of that power. This theme of sovereignty, but sovereignty limited by law, has been central to all the genres we are examining. A crucial question of sovereignty, royal succession, was publicly debated in many media in terms of what we would call constitutional law. The English learned about law as a crucial dimension of politics, not only directly through attendance at the drama of public trials and executions but also through printed and oral accounts of trials and parliamentary lawmaking. Some of them actually became participants in the trial drama through service on juries and grand juries. This chapter surveys the genres of the law.

Legal culture and political culture are not really separable in early modern England. The language of politics was often expressed in terms of law or the rights of Englishmen protected by the common law of England, and many political conflicts arose over differing views of who legitimately possessed certain legal authority. Every genre of the period conveyed information and argument about law and legalized language about politics. An appreciation of English political culture must, therefore, take account of the many forms of law, the mixture of administrative and legal institutions, different understandings of the royal prerogative and the tensions between the common law and other legal practices. Though the English were convinced that they had the best and fairest legal system in the world, the legal institutions that constituted this highly idealized legal regime engendered differences that frequently erupted into the political arena.

This chapter outlines the then current conceptions of law and their impact on political thought. It describes the most important legal institutions and the political discourses they engendered. The chapter also deals briefly with elections to the law-making body, Parliament, and discusses a group of highly politicized and highly publicized trials that involved perceived threats to the Crown, Parliament or the common law.

The English were reasonably comfortable living under a variety of laws. These included divine law, natural law, the common law, equity, ecclesiastical law, statute law and custom. Reference to any or all of these could be found in genres ranging from the sermon to the political pamphlet, from the professional writing of lawyers and judges to that of poets and dramatists, and from royal pronouncements to parliamentary speeches.

All forms of law had claims to legitimacy, though the relationships among them were often unclear. Some, for example, argued that the law contained in Scripture had priority over human law. For others the common law had the highest status, still others that the common law and Christianity were not divergent. Some believed that natural law provided universal principles of reason and justice, others that English common law was a necessary and sufficient embodiment of the natural law.

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