A Jurisprudence of Power concerns the brutal suppression under martial law of the Jamaica uprising of 1865, and the explosive debate and litigation these events spawned in England. The book explores the centrality of legal ideas and institutions in English politics, and of political ideas that give rise to great questions of English law.

It documents how the world's most powerful and articulate political elite struggled with fundamental questions about law, morality, and power. Can a constitutional state rule a sprawling empire without breaking faith with the rule of law? Can it contend with the violent resistance of subjugated peoples without corrupting the integrity of its legal and political ideals?

The book addresses these questions as it reconstructs the most prolonged and important conflict over martial law and the rule of law in the history of England in the nineteenth century.

R.W. Kostal's profile page

R.W. Kostal is a Professor of Law and History at the University of Western Ontario. His research focuses on the history of modern law and society in England and the United States. His first book, Law and English Railway Capitalism 1825-1875, was awarded the Ferguson Prize of the Canadian Historical Association in 1995.

"..Rande Kostal's justification for entering this well-ploughed historical field is to move the law to the centre of the stage...This he does superbly by painstaking research and analysis, displaying mastery of archival sources and the written word. Indeed, Kostal succeeds so well that at times one starts to believe that the law is not just centre stage but the entire stage...a distinguished contribution..A Jurisprudence of Power deserves a wide readership"

--Michael Taggart, Modern Law Review

"The controversy arising from the brutal suppression of a rebellion at Morant Bay, Jamaica in mid-October 1865 was one of the causes célèbres of the Victorian era...Rande Kostal's justification for entering this well-ploughed historical field is to move the law to the centre of the stage...This he does superbly by painstaking research and analysis, displaying mastery of archival sources and the written word. Indeed, Kostal succeeds so well that at times one starts to believe that the law is not just centre stage but the entire stage... this book...transcends time and place, and contains a morality tale about misplaced faith in law in times of crisis....it is only in the last third of the twentieth century that law once again has started to insert itself back into history and politics. Kostal is part of that movement and this book makes a distinguished contribution to it...A Jurisprudence of Power deserves a wide readership."

--Michael Taggart, Modern Law Review

"...much that is revealing emerges in Kostal's tracing of these events...Arguably the most important thing about the Jamaica Committee was not its methods or their outcome but its crystallisation of a clutch of issues which have changed in shape but not in essence in the intervening years. Law and order are still not the same thing."

--Lord Justice Stephen Sedley, London Review of Books