ABSTRACT
This book is an exploration of how law exercises power and the extent to which it resists and disqualifies alternative accounts of social reality. Initially it is important to clarify what is meant by the term ‘law’, since using this concept in the singular tends to imply that law is a body of knowledge/rules which is unified in intent, theory, and practice. In fact I reject this notion of the unity of law because law operates with conflicting principles and contradictory effects at every level from High Court judgements to administrative law. As Hirst (1986) has pointed out, there is now considerable dispute over what law is. Notwithstanding this, the collectivity to which the label law is applied presents us with the appearance of unity and singularity. Hence law constitutes a plurality of principles, knowledges, and events, yet it claims a unity through the common usage of the term ‘law’. I shall argue that it is in fact empowered by its ‘singular’ image. It is important to acknowledge that the usage of the term ‘law’ operates as a claim to power in that it embodies a claim to a superior and unified field of knowledge which concedes little to other competing discourses which by comparison fail to promote such a unified appearance. I shall therefore retain the term ‘law’ because this power to define (itself and other discourses) is part of the power of law that I wish to explore. In addition it is law’s ability to impose its definition of events on everyday life that interests me. For example I shall examine how law’s definition of rape takes precedence over women’s definitions and how law manages to retain the ability to arrogate to itself the right to define the truth of things in spite of the growing challenge of other discourses like feminism.
