The Police Power: Patriarchy and the Foundations of American Government
Markus D. Dubber, THE POLICE POWER: PATRIARCHY AND THE FOUNDATIONS OF AMERICAN GOVERNMENT, Columbia University Press, 2005
Posted: 25 Nov 2009
Date Written: 2005
Abstract
Among the powers of government none is greater than the power to police, and none less circumscribed. For centuries, it has been a commonplace of American legal and political discourse that the police power "is, and must be from its very nature, incapable of any very exact definition or limitation." Upon the police power, "the most essential, the most insistent, and always one of the least limitable of the powers of government," hinges nothing less than "the security of social order, the life and health of the citizen, the comfort of an existence in a thickly populated community, the enjoyment of private and social life, and the beneficial use of property." Often treated as coextensive with the power to govern, the power to police underlies a vast expanse of legislation and regulation at all levels of governance, from the national government through the states and down to the smallest municipalities.
This book explores the origins of this most expansive, and most amorphous, of governmental powers with a particular focus on its most awesome manifestation, the law of crime and punishment. It argues that the defining characteristics of the police power, including its very undefinability, reflect its origins in the discretionary, and virtually limitless, patriarchal power of the householder over his household. The results of this genealogical investigation then are used to set the framework for a critical analysis of the police power in general, and the criminal law in particular.
Keywords: criminal law, legal theory, political theory, legal history, police power, police science
JEL Classification: K14, K30, B10
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation