Legal Rhetoric and Revolutionary Change

Abstract

If we define revolutionary change as the alteration of fundamental political arrangements in ways inconsistent with accepted understandings of law, we would not expect to find the invocation of law in justification of that change. In fact, however, such justification is not uncommon. This paper examines three cases exposing differing attitudes to legal justification of revolution - the English Revolution of 1688-89, the secession of the Southern states at the beginning of the American Civil War and the Bolshevik revolution of 1917. In each case the paper describes the revolutionaries' use of legal language. It then shows how the use or avoidance of positive law arguments correlated with social attitudes toward law in the relevant time and place.

Keywords: Law, Revolution, Secession, Glorious Revolution, Bolshevik Revolution