Description: In the mid-eighteenth century, author and magistrate Henry Fielding adjudicated cases of theft, assault, and public disorder from his London home on Bow Street. By the middle of the nineteenth century, Fielding's modest 'police office' had expanded to become the most prolific court system in Britain and the cornerstone of criminal and civil justice in the metropolis. Sascha Auerbach examines the fascinating history of this institution through the lens of 'courtroom culture' - the combination of formal statute and informal custom that guided everyday practice in the London Police Courts. He offers a new model for understanding the relationship between law, culture, and society in modern Britain and illuminates how the local courtroom became a crucial part of everyday life and thoroughly entangled with popular representations of justice and morality.
Brief description: Sascha Auerbach is a Lecturer in Modern British and Colonial History at the University of Nottingham. A former Fulbright Scholar, he is the author of Race, Law and 'The Chinese Puzzle' in Imperial Britain (2009).
Review Quotes: 'Armed with Sword and Scales will become renowned, above all, for its compelling replacement of the notion of a "policeman-state" by that of a "court-going community" ... Auerbach finds in the historical record little to validate an unrelievedly coercive interpretation of the police courts, and much to demonstrate the role of individual agency and the creative use of the law and its machinery.' Victor Bailey, Journal of British Studies