Against the Law: Why Justice Requires Fewer Laws and a Smaller State

by David Renton

Overview

One of Britain’s leading barristers argues for a world in which the law should play a smaller part in all our lives.

Understanding the main political projects of our times, and their plans to expand or shrink the law, is the first step towards achieving greater equality and averting climate disaster.

Since 2016, Britain has been ruled by populists, who promise to expand democracy and shrink the law by taking back power from the European Union. Yet what these populists have actually done in power is institute a vast increase in new laws, made by ministers and not Parliament, regulating every aspect of our lives.

This move of promising less law while actually expanding it, has been characteristic of our lives for forty years, ever since the neoliberal counter-revolution. Every year, new criminal offences are created; new regulations are introduced. 

Renton’s book dares us to imagine a world in which workers are winning, and ecocide treated with the urgency that it deserves. These changes can only come about, he argues, if the movements of the oppressed choose to disengage from the law.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781914420184
Publisher:	Watkins Media
Publication date:	07/12/2022
Sold by:	Penguin Random House Publisher Services
Format:	eBook
Pages:	270
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

David Renton is one of Britain’s leading social justice barristers. His clients have included Occupy protesters and blacklisted trade unionists. He writes regularly on law and justice for The Guardian and The London Review of Books.

Table of Contents

Introduction 1

Part I Why Neoliberalism Means More Law 19

01 Hayek, Friedman and the Growth of the Law 21

02 Neoliberal Ascendancy and Ghost Law 40

03 Big Data, Online Courts and the Disappearance of the State 66

Part II Populism and the Mirage of Democratic Control 87

04 Brexit: How the Shrinking of the Law Became the Law's Advance 89

05 The Philosophies of Populism: Between Weber and Schmitt 110

06 Brexit, Covid and Emergency Rule 127

Part III Dejuridification as a Left-wing Programme 147

07 Complicity with and Disengagement from the Law 149

08 Marx and the Rejection of the Law 175

09 The Dilemmas of Environmental Law 194

Conclusion 216

Notes 222

Acknowledgements 262

Editorial Reviews

"Renton is one of the most consistently interesting and imaginative political writers in Britain today, and this eloquent attack on the repressive legalism common to populists and neoliberals alike is one of his best yet." - Owen Hatherley, author of Red Metropolis

"Renton’s experience as a barrister and historian shines through in a learned, and eminently readable, account of the structure of law and the daily business of the Courts." - Liz Davies, barrister and Vice-President Haldane Society of Socialist Lawyers

“Meticulously researched and convincingly argued, Renton urges us to quit seeking liberation through legislation, instead wield our collective power for change.” - Grietje Baars, Reader in Law & Social Change, City University

“A cogent, compelling argument that the pursuit of justice requires breaking with the hegemony of law.” - Paul O’Connell, Reader in Law, SOAS

All police and prison abolitionists should read this book... it is a timely and sharp intervention, reminding us that laws are not only oppressively enforced but are themselves be a tool of control.” - Shanice Octavia McBean, activist with Sisters Uncut

From the Publisher