ABSTRACT
The central theme of this book has been that we are constrained and dominated by what we do not question and criticise, both about the world in general, and about law in particular. Thus it seems appropriate that this book should end by putting itself in question and, in particular, its claim to provide an account of law which is in some sense better than the picture of law it criticises, namely, the common sense of the Rule of Law. Arguably, to fail to do this would be to evade the argument that all the book is doing is replacing one dominating reality with another, and that argument may be seen as the disabling paranoia of the left on which the 20th century ended (see below, p 171). Therefore, just as this book sought to show where some of the dominant ideas of, and about, law have come from, and has thereby sought to evaluate them, so in these reconsiderations we will comment on the origins of the basic critical ideas that inform this book and thereby attempt to evaluate them.
