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Beyond ignorance and complacency: Robert Stevens' journey through Lawyers and the Courts

2009; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 16; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/09695950903354840

1469-9257

David Sugarman,

Law in Society and Culture

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Acknowledgements I should like to thank Robert Stevens for allowing me to include material arising from an interview that I undertook with him in 1994; Avrom Sherr for his support; William Twining, Robert Stevens and Mike Macnair for their valuable comments on this paper; and the staff of the London School of Economics Archives for their assistance with archival material. I should especially like to thank Léonie Sugarman for her many helpful suggestions for improving my writing. Notes B. Abel-Smith & R. Stevens, Lawyers and the Courts (London, 1967). Although this essay is largely devoted to LATC's particular significance with respect to England, LATC's broader relevance is briefly discussed in the conclusion. D. Sugarman, Legal theory, the common law mind and the making of the textbook tradition, in: W. Twining (Ed.) Legal Theory and Common Law (Oxford, 1986), pp. 26–61; N. Duxbury, Frederic Pollock and the English Juristic Tradition (Oxford, 2004). W. Twining, Blackstone's Tower (London, 1994), Ch. 2. On ‘tipping points’, see M. Gladwell, The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference (Boston, MA, 2000). R.L. Abel, The Legal Profession in England and Wales (Oxford, Basil Blackwell, 1988), pp. 265, 267 and Table 3.2. On how and why administrative law was anathema to the English constitutional tradition, see M. Taggart, Prolegomenon to an intellectual history of administrative law in the twentieth century (2005) 43 Osgoode Hall Law Journal 223; M. Loughlin, Why the history of English administrative law is not written, in: D. Dyzenhaus, M. Hunt & G. Huscroft (Eds) A Simple Common Lawyer: Essays in Honour of Michael Taggart (Oxford, 2009), pp. 151–178. F. Cownie & R. Cocks, ‘A Great and Noble Occupation!’ The History of the Society of Legal Scholars (Oxford, 2009), pp. 49–84. On Warwick law school, see generally, G.P. Wilson (Ed.) Frontiers of Legal Scholarship. Twenty-Five Years of Warwick Law School (Chichester, 1995). The British Journal of Law and Society, the first British journal of its kind (subsequently renamed the Journal of Law and Society) was first published in 1974. The Socio-Legal Group of the SPTL was founded in 1972, and the SLSA was established in 1990. The Centre for Socio-Legal Studies, an inter-disciplinary and multi-disciplinary research institute dedicated to the study of law in society, was founded in 1972 at Oxford University. The Joseph Rowntree Memorial Trust set up a Legal Research Unit at Bedford College – what was in reality the first socio-legal centre in Britain – in 1965. A key figure in the establishment of the unit, the Centre for Socio-Legal Studies Centre at Oxford, and both a pioneer and champion of empirical legal research and a social history of legal institutions, was O.R. McGregor (subsequently, Lord McGregor of Durris); see, for example, O.R. McGregor, Divorce in England (London, 1957) and O.R. McGregor, Social History and Law Reform (London, 1981). McGregor championed LATC: see below. See A.W.B. Simpson, The survival of the common law, in: Then and Now, 1799–1974 (London, 1974), arguing that the common law system in England “operates in much the same way as it did in the eighteenth century” (p. 67). C. Dickens, Bleak House (London, 1853). C. Dickens, Little Dorrit (London, 1857). See, generally, D. Sugarman, In the spirit of Weber: law, modernity and ‘the peculiarities of the English’, in: C. Peterson (Ed.) History and European Private Law: Development of Common Methods and Principles (Stockholm, 1997), pp. 217–262. Jimmy Porter was a disaffected young man in John Osborne's celebrated play, Look Back in Anger (1956). Concerning In Search of Justice, see ABEL-SMITH/14/15 – File regarding In Search of Justice: Society and the Legal System (1968) by Brian Abel-Smith and Robert Bocking Stevens, The Papers of Brian Abel-Smith, London School of Economics Archives. As the title of this essay indicates, the main focus of attention in this paper is Robert Stevens. R. Hutton, Debates in Stuart History (London, 2004), p. 1. In this essay, quotation marks are used to indicate verbatim quotes from my interview with Robert Stevens unless indicated otherwise. Portraits of delegates no. 12: John Skevington, The Charter, 19 May 1839. Skevington was arrested and briefly imprisoned for supporting workers in an industrial dispute. He was held in such “high regard by his Loughborough comrades” that in 1848 they “presented him with a testimonial and his portrait in oils”: see, generally, J.F.C. Harrison, in: A. Briggs (Ed.) Chartist Studies (London, 1959), pp. 84–86 and http://www.chartists.net/John-Skevington.htm. The Six Points of the People's Charter were: universal male suffrage; secret ballot; no property qualification for members of Parliament; payment of members; equal electoral districts; annual Parliaments. Stevens' assigned reading included Dicey, Law and Public Opinion in the Nineteen Century England, Maine, Ancient Law and Jolliffe, Constitutional History of Medieval England. Such was his passion for history that he took and passed three distinct History General Certificate of Education Advanced Level examinations: Ancient History, Modern History and History in Foreign Texts. F.H. Lawson, The Oxford Law School 1850–1965 (Oxford, 1968), p. 149. Robert's experience was not unusual: see, A.W.B. Simpson, Herbert Hart elucidated (2006) 104 Michigan Law Review 1437–1459 at 1438–1439. On Law at Oxford in the late 1940s and early 1950s, see Lawson, op. cit., 146–177, and N. Lacey, A Life of H.L.A. Hart (Oxford, 2004), pp. 112–178. Keble College, in: H.E. Salter & M.D. Lobel (Eds) A History of the County of Oxford: Volume 3: The University of Oxford (1954), pp. 335–336. See, John Gross' memoir of Oxford, and how an East End boy became a Man of Letters: J. Gross, A Double Thread: A Childhood in Mile End – and Beyond (London, 2001). Linklaters & Paines were one of the premier City law firms. On the institutional arrangements that developed whereby Oxford law graduates taught first year students at American law schools, see Lawson, op. cit., 169. Response to a Legal Education Questionnaire administered by the author, April 1994, p. 5. On the Yale Law School, see L. Kalman, Legal Realism at Yale (Chapel Hill, NC, 1986); L. Kalman, Yale Law School and the Sixties (Chapel Hill, NC, 2005); A.T. Kronman (Ed.), History of Yale Law School (New Haven, CT, 2004). Other British scholars who were similarly influenced by their experience of studying and/or teaching in US law schools, include William Twining, David Williams, Michael Zander, Geoffrey Bindman, Rosalyn Higgins and, more recently, Hugh Collins, Martin Loughlin, Stephen Livingstone and the author, as well as those who went to Africa, like William Twining, Robert Stevens and Patrick McAusland. H. Laswell & M. McDougal, Legal education and public policy (1943) 52 Yale Law Journal 203 at 206. As Robert was subsequently to observe, this article “marks the clear beginning of the post-Realist period” in American legal scholarship: R. Stevens, Two cheers for 1870: the American Law School (1971) V Perspectives in American History 403–548 at 530. “The jurisprudence of Lasswell and McDougal marks the first American attempt to conceive of … lawyering – legal teaching, research, practice and decision-making – as an overtly political endeavour”: N. Duxbury, Patterns of American Jurisprudence (Oxford, 1997), p. 164. See, also, N. Duxbury, Post-realism and legal process, in: D. Patterson (Ed.) A Companion to Philosophy of Law and Legal Theory (London, 1999), esp. pp. 293–295. When asked to list the five legal thinkers who most influenced him in order of importance, Robert ranked Gilmore as first, followed by James Willard Hurst, Alexander Bickel, William Twining and Myers McDougal. And when asked to list the three major law teachers who influenced him, in order of importance, he responded Grant Gilmore, Eugene Rostow and Harold Lasswell: Response to the author's Legal Education Questionnaire, April 1994. Haight, Gardiner, Poor and Havens, New York City. Robert's general interest in politics was manifested by the fact that at Oxford University he joined the Conservative, Liberal and Labour Clubs. After he graduated from Oxford, however, “I … regarded myself as a Liberal in the twentieth century use of that term. I certainly … [regarded] myself as a Labour supporter until at least the mid [nineteen] sixties”. To supplement his income, Robert undertook tutorials for his old college, Keble, on Friday evenings and Saturdays (1957–1958). Robert was made an Associate Professor in his second year (1961). See, generally, G. Shivji, Limits of Legal Radicalism: Reflections on Teaching Law at the University of Dar-es-Salaam (Dar-es-Salaam, 1986); W. Twining, Legal education within East Africa, in: East African Law Today (London, British Institute of International and Comparative Law, Commonwealth Law Series No. 5, 1966). On the history of ‘law in context’ and the Law Faculty at Dar, see, W. Twining, Law in Context (Oxford, 1997), pp. 1–62. Building on the work of social reformers such as Beatrice and Sidney Webb, and Benjamin Seebohm Rowntree. See M. Jones & R. Lowe, From Beveridge to Blair. The First Fifty Years of Britain's Welfare State, 1948–1998 (Manchester, 2002), pp. 6–7. Timuss, for example, was a member of The Community Relations Commission, established to improve ‘race relations’; the National Insurance Advisory Committee; the Royal Commission on Medical Education; the One-Parent (Finer) Committee; and the Supplementary Benefits Commission (of which he was later Deputy Chairman): see, A. Oakley, Man and Wife: Richard and Kay Titmuss (London, 1996). Abel-Smith was employed part-time by the World Health Organisation from 1957 onwards, and advisor to the EEC Commissioner for Social Affairs from 1977 to 1980. He was Treasurer and later Vice-President of the Fabian Society and played a big role in the foundation of the Child Poverty Action Group. Subsequent to LATC, he collaborated with Michael Zander and Rosalind Brooke in Legal Problems and the Citizen (London, 1973). Abel-Smith was “probably the most influential political adviser appointed by successive Labour governments, first in 1968 to Crossman, and then, in turn, to Barbara Castle, David Ennals and finally Peter Shore”: P. Townsend, Obituary, Professor Brian Abel-Smith, The Independent, 9 April 1996. See generally, P. Townsend, Smith, Brian Abel- (1926–1996), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography; P. Townsend, Brian Abel-Smith, in: E. Levenson, G. Lodge & G. Rosen (Eds) Fabian Thinkers: 120 Years of Radical Thought (London, Fabian Society, 2004), Ch. 11. The British intellectual socialist movement created in the 1880s, whose purpose is to advance the principles of social democracy via gradualist and reformist, rather than revolutionary means. When asked to list the five major lay (i.e. non-legal) thinkers who most influenced him, in order of importance, Stevens listed Titmuss as the most important, followed (in descending order) by Robert Duesbury, Basil Yamey, E.P. Thompson and Brian Abel-Smith: Robert Stevens' response to Legal Education Questionnaire administered by the author, April 1994. The LSE appointment had arisen in large measure because Otto Kahn-Freund, then a leading member of the LSE Law Department, had been impressed by Stevens when Kahn-Freund had taught at Yale. Kahn-Freund told Stevens that he wanted Stevens to return to England and teach permanently at the LSE: Robert Stevens' interview with the author, April 1994. Funding had been secured from the Social Science Research Council (UK) and the Rockefeller Foundation. LSE provided the base for their research and LSE and Yale paid for research assistance and typing: LATC, p. x. B. Abel-Smith, A History of the Nursing Profession (London, 1960); B. Abel-Smith, The Hospitals 1800–1948 (London, 1964). Rosalind Brooke was one of Abel-Smith's former research assistants, and she became a teacher in the Social Administration Department at LSE. The importance of her contribution to LATC was acknowledged both in the preface (p. ix) and the title page of LATC. On Titmuss' networking skills see Oakley, op. cit.; on Abel-Smith's networking skills, see Townsend (1996), op. cit. R. Stevens & B. Yamey, The Restrictive Practices Court: A Study of the Judicial Process and Economic Policy (London, 1965). A. Sampson, Anatomy of Britain (1962), p. 159. “The Law”, he wrote, “still clings to its old authority and prestige, rather than to interest itself in the exciting developments of society. The Law, more than any other profession, is imprisoned in its own myths and shibboleths, and while the benchers preserve their traditions, and the solicitors tie up their thick paper in pink tape, their protected world has become increasingly irrelevant to the great corporate world outside”. J. Richards, Films and British Identity (Manchester, 1997), p. 148 and see, generally, Chs. 5 and 6. Quoted and discussed in D. Sandbrook, White Heat. A History of Britain in the Swinging Sixties (London, 2006), p. 4. Ibid., 740. See, generally, M. Box, Rebel Advocate: A Biography of Gerald Gardiner (London, 1983); R. Stevens, Law and Politics (London, 1979), pp. 431–436; A. Paterson, The Law Lords (London, 1983). See, Stevens (1979), op. cit. and Paterson, op. cit. The Rt Hon. Lord Gardiner, Law reform and the teachers of law (1966) NS IX (2) Journal of the Society of Public Teachers of Law 190–192 at 190–191. By the end of the 1960s, capital punishment had been abolished, homosexuality, abortion and suicide were no longer criminalised, the divorce laws had been eased, and the state no longer censored theatrical performances: see Sandbrook, op. cit., 319. Ibid., 555. Higher Education (The Robbins Report) (1963) Cmnd 2153 (London, HMSO). Robert Stevens provided a characteristically lucid and detailed assessment of these developments in R. Stevens, University to Uni: The Politics of Higher Education in England since 1944 (London, Politico's, 2004, revised edition 2005). On the pressure for change in English legal education during the 1960s, see Cownie & Cocks, op. cit., 85–119. On ‘windows of opportunity’, see J. Kingdon, Agendas, Alternatives, and Public Policies (New York, 1984, revised edition 2003). On the similar notion of ‘legal opportunity structures’ see, K. Sikkink in: R. Sieder, L. Schjolden & A. Angell (Eds) The Judicialization of Politics in Latin America (London, 2005). R.M. Jackson regarded 1965 as a significant turning point for the reform of the English legal system: see R.M. Jackson, Preface, in Machinery of Justice, 6th edition (Cambridge, 1972). In effect, Abel-Smith and Stevens established themselves as a de facto commission of inquiry on legal institutions in the hope that LATC and ISOJ would pave the way for an official inquiry and the necessary empirical research. O.R. McGregor, The Observer, 20 September 1967. New Law Journal (1967), pp. 437–438. Z. Cowen (1968) 20 Stanford Law Review 1054–1057 at 1054. T.L. Becker (1968) 62 American Political Science Review 297–298 at 297. Lord Chorley (1968) 31 Modern Law Review 346–350 at 346. G. Wilson (1969) 82 Harvard Law Review 1408–1414 at 1414. M. Zander, Lawyers and the Public Interest (London, 1968), p. 40, n. 26. F.A. Mann (1973) 22 The International and Comparative Law Quarterly 399. Mann was perhaps stung by an unflattering reference to him in LATC (p. 371, n.7). S. Sedley, The sociology of law (1977) Marxism Today 301–303 at 301. The exceptional amount of attention devoted to money, costs and economics undercut the traditional divide between ‘law’ (considered as a ‘gentlemanly profession’) and ‘business’. See ‘Part II. 1875–1939: The Era of Stagnation’; Ch. 4, ‘The Courts: Complacency and Growing Irrelevance’; Ch. 7, ‘Legal Education: Conservatism Triumphant’; Ch. 9, ‘The Barristers Consolidate: Trade Unionism and Restrictive Practices’; Ch. 15, ‘The Barristers’ Trade Union in Action'. Concerning the choice of publisher and allied matters see, ABEL-SMITH/1/50 – Correspondence with Heinemann, 1973–1982, The Papers of Brian Abel-Smith, London School of Economics Archives. Simpson (1974), op. cit., 63–64. See, M.J. Horwitz, The conservative tradition in the writing of American legal history (1973) 17 American Journal of Legal History 275–294 at 278. On the parallels between trends in America in the 1920s and 1930s with respect to the rise of Legal Realism and England in the 1960s, see A.L. Goldstein, Research into the administration of criminal law (1966) 6 British Journal of Criminology 27 at 37; D. Sugarman, ‘A hatred of disorder’: legal science, liberalism and imperialism, in: P. Fitzpatrick (Ed.) Dangerous Supplements: Resistance and Renewal in Jurisprudence (London, 1991), pp. 34–67, 59–63. D. J. Boorstin, The Mysterious Science of the Law: An Essay on Blackstone's Commentaries … (Cambridge, MA, 1941); J.A.G. Pocock, Politics, Language and Time (New York, 1971), Ch. ‘Burke and the Ancient Constitution’; J.A.G. Pocock, The Ancient Constitution and the Feudal Law (Cambridge, 1987); P.S. Atiyah, The Rise and Fall of Freedom of Contract (Oxford, 1979); P.S. Atiyah, Pragmatism and Theory in English Law (London, 1987), pp. 1–42; D. Sugarman, The legal boundaries of liberty: Dicey, liberalism and legal science (1983) 46 Modern Law Review 102; A. Cromartie, Sir Matthew Hale 1607–1676 (Cambridge, 1995), esp. p. 58: “The [English] Republic was a failure because the common law survived”. A.V. Dicey, Introduction to the Study of the Law of the Constitution, 8th edition (London, 1915), pp. xxxviii, xliv; Lord Hewart of Bury, The New Despotism (London, 1929); C.K. Allen, Bureaucracy Triumphant (Oxford, 1931); F. Neumann, The Democratic and Authoritarian State (Glencoe, 1957), pp. 22–68; D. Sugarman, Bourgeois collectivism, professional power and the boundaries of the state: the private and public life of the Law Society, 1825–1914 (1996a) 3 International Journal of the Legal Profession 81–135; C. Stebbings, The Private Trustee in Victorian England (Cambridge, 2002), pp. 61, 62 and 200; C. Stebbings, ‘Officialism’: law, bureaucracy and ideology in late Victorian England, in: A. Lewis & M. Lobban (Eds) Law and History: Current Legal Issues (Oxford, 2003), pp. 317ff. H.S. Maine, Popular Government (London, 1885); K.D. Brown (Ed.), Essays in Anti-Labour History (London, 1974). This deep distrust of the state extended well beyond middle class Liberals. It tapped into a popular suspicion of the state: see, H. Pelling, Popular Politics and Society in Late Victorian Britain (London, 1968). Robson was of the view that Lord Hewart's ideas in The New Despotism (1929) were shared by 99% of the Bench, the Bar and the Solicitors' profession: W.A. Robson, Justice and Administrative Law, 3rd edition (London, 1951), p. 421. Labour Law as a distinct topic first appears in the BCL exams for Trinity Term 1969, and in the Final Honour Schools for Trinity Term 1981. Sir Otto Kahn-Freund (1900–1979), who was appointed Professor of Comparative Law, University of Oxford, in 1964. Lord Wedderburn of Charlton, An anniversary preface (1987) 50 Modern Law Review 673–676 at 674. R. Stevens, Legal education in context, in: P. Birks (Ed.) Reviewing Legal Education (Oxford, 1994), pp. 87–92 at 87. P. Burke, History and Social Theory (Ithaca, NY, 1992), Ch. 1. F. von Hayek, The Road to Serfdom (London, 1944). For Hayek ‘the road to serfdom’ inadvertently set upon by central planning, with its dismantling of the free market system, ends in the destruction of all individual economic and personal freedom. LATC, pp. 365–366; W.T.S. Stallybrass, Law in the universities (1947–1951) 1 (NS) Journal of the Society of Public Teachers of Law 157, 163. Stallybrass claimed that “lawyers … are bound to be conservative; that is inevitable, because you cannot be a good lawyer unless you have a respect for property, life and order”. Stallybrass's views were echoed by P.A. Landon, a subsequent President of the SPTL: see P.A. Landon (1952–1954) 2 (NS) Journal of the Society of Public Teachers of Law 32. On Stallybrass, see, J.M. Crook, Brasenose. The Biography of an Oxford College (Oxford, 2008), Ch. 7, esp. p. 331, which softens the image conveyed by LATC; and Cownie & Cocks, op. cit., 69. Whether this exemplifies a deeper intellectual and cultural malaise is somewhat controversial. See, for example, P. Anderson, English Questions (London, 1992); S. Collini, Absent Minds (Oxford, 2006). W.G. Simon (1968) 73 American Historical Review 814–815 at 814. Wilson (1969), op. cit., 1411–1413. In this respect, LATC was not helped by its over-arching characterisation of distinctive periods – “1875–1939: The Era of Stagnation” etc. R. Cocks, History in eclipse? The role of the past in books on the English legal system, in: P. Birks (Ed.) The Life of the Law (1993), pp. 257–267. Burke, op. cit., 3. Wilson (1969), op. cit., 1411–1412. And, therefore, there was greater continuity between LATC, and the best of the more conventional scholarship on the history and practices of English legal institutions, such as F.W. Maitland, Justice and Police (London, 1885); G.R.Y. Radcliffe & G. Cross, The English Legal System, 1st edition (London, 1937); and R.M. Jackson, Machinery of Justice in England, 1st edition (Cambridge, 1940). Thus, ‘sociological’ was the wrong label. See, generally, A. Giddens, Sociology, 6th edition (Cambridge, 2009). In other words, Stevens brought American perspectives to bear on the English legal system at a key moment. G.S. Jones, The language of Chartism, in: J. Epstein & D. Thompson (Eds) The Chartist Experience (London, 1982), pp. 3–58. “Old Corruption” is a shorthand for a major feature of the British state during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries: namely, the use of patronage, emoluments, sinecures and perquisites by the state to bribe, remunerate or honour. See, further, W.D. Rubinstein, The end of ‘Old Corruption’ in Britain 1780–1860 (1983) 101 Past and Present 55–86. H.L.A. Hart, Essays on Bentham (Oxford, 1982). O.R. McGregor, Social research and social policy in the 19th century (1957) 8 British Journal of Sociology 146–57; McGregor (1981), op. cit. On facts as subversive, see T.G. Ash, Facts Are Subversive (London, 2009). E.R. Pease, The History of the Fabian Society (London, 2004). LATC, p. viii. The discursive construction of criticism directed against LATC was strikingly similar to that famously dissected by A.O. Hirschman in his The Rhetoric of Reaction (Cambridge, MA, 1991). Cf. M. Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge (London, 1972); T.S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago, 1970). However, Stevens was promoted to a tenured chair at Yale Law School before LATC was published. Sandbrook, op. cit., 322–323. R. Abel, English Lawyers between Market and the State (Oxford, 2003). R.M. Jackson, Machinery of Justice in England (Cambridge, 1940, 1953, 1960, 1964, 1967, 1972, 1977): now published as J.R. Spencer (Ed.), Jackson's Machinery of Justice (1989). Jackson (1940), op. cit. Ibid. Jackson (5th edition, 1967), op. cit., 323. Jackson (1940), op. cit. On the expulsion of legal history from English legal systems texts see Cocks (1993), op. cit. See, generally, P. Girard, Who's afraid of Canadian legal history? (2007) 57 University of Toronto Law Review 727–753 at 729–730. The only other exemplary ‘external’ histories of law and society in modern England at the time were L. Radzinowicz, A History of English Criminal Law and its Administration from 1750 (London, 1948–86); C.H.S. Fifoot, Judge and Jurist in the Reign of Queen Victoria (London, 1959); D. Williams, Not in the Public Interest: The Problem of Security in Democracy (London, 1965) and Keeping the Peace. The Police and Public Order (London, 1967); and McGregor's, Divorce in England (op. cit.). A. Harding's pioneering A Social History of English Law (Harmondsworth, 1966) focussed on the period before 1750 and was published shortly before LATC went to press. On the distinction between ‘internal’ and ‘external’ legal history, see R.W. Gordon, Introduction: J. Willard Hurst and the common law tradition in American legal historiography (1975) 10 Law and Society Review 9–55, esp. 11. Wilson (1969), op. cit., 1411. On the new legal history, see D. Sugarman (Ed.), Law in History: Histories of Law and Society (New York & Aldershot, 1996b), 2 vols; K.J.M. Smith & J.P.S. McLaren, History's living legacy (2001) 21 Legal Studies 251–324. See, for example, D.H. Flaherty, Writing Canadian legal history: an introduction, in: D. Flaherty (Ed.), Essays in Canadian Law, Vol. I (Toronto, 1981), pp. 3–42; McGregor (1981), op. cit., 15; W.R. Cornish & G.D.N. Clark, Law and Society in England 1750–1950 (London, 1989), pp. 60, 61, 67, 69, 70, 122, 123, 135–43, 152, 497, 498, 663; D. Sugarman, Simple images and complex realities: English lawyers and their relationship to business and politics (1993) 11 (2) Law and History Review 257–301 at 261; Sugarman (1996a), op. cit.; R. Cocks, Foundations of the Modern Bar (London, 1983), pp. 7, 22, 32, 85, 103, 157, 177, 195, 198, 214, 230. Cocks, while critical of aspects of LATC, acknowledges that Abel-Smith and Stevens “… transformed the historical study of the modern legal professions in England … [and] raised new questions … Certainly the present book could hardly have been written without assistance from their analysis on many crucial issues” (p. 7). For example, Zander, op. cit., 4, 40, 165, 187, 191 and 201; Abel (1988), op. cit. contains 70 references to LATC and ISOJ; Abel (2003), op. cit., 33. LATC was not the first to experience such a backlash. In 1950 the Law Lords summoned and rebuked the editor of the Modern Law Review for publishing L.C.B. Gower's critique of English legal education: C. Glasser, Radicals and refugees (1987) 50 Modern Law Review 688–708 at 703–705. Other instances of backlash include the initial reception of Zander's, Lawyers and the Public Interest (op. cit.); the threat to prosecute Michael McConville and John Baldwin when they revealed plea bargaining – M. McConville & J. Baldwin, Negotiated Justice: Pressures to Plead Guilty (London, 1977); and the 1981 assertion of a former Law Lord that the Modern Law Review was inherently leftish, following the publication by the Modern Law Review of an article critiquing the approach of the Law Lords: Glasser, op. cit., 705–706. C. Glasser & C. Harlow, Legal services and the alternatives, in: R. Rawlings (Ed.) Law, Society and Economy (Oxford, 1997), p. 326. See, for example, Richard Abel's Larson-inspired investigations of the “professional project” of market control and collective status mobility – as exemplified by Abel (1988), op. cit. See, for example, H. Genn, Hard Bargaining: Out of Court Settlement in Personal Injury Actions (Oxford, 1987); H. Genn et al., Paths to Justice. What People Do and Think About Going to Law (Oxford, 1999); H. Genn, Judging Civil Justice (Cambridge, 2009). T. Goriely, Rushcliffe fifty years on: the changing role of civil legal aid within the welfare state (1994) 21 Journal of Law and Society 545–566; H. Sommerlad, Managerialism and the legal profession (1995) 2 International Journal of the Legal Profession 159–186; Abel (2003), op. cit. F. Regan, A. Paterson & T. Goriely (Eds) The Transformation of Legal Aid (Oxford, 1999).