"The criminal law is simply the wrong place to look for the active hand of the ruling classes.From the standpoint of the rulers the criminal justice system occupies a place not much more central than the garbage collection system"(J. Langbein)

Is criminal law a minor public policy concern for governments and of little significance to questions of power? Comment on Langbein's position in the specific context of political trials and national security crises, as well as in the general context of the routine business of the criminal courts. (For the latter, include a paragraph on each of the following periods: the consolidation of royal authority in medieval and early modern England, the discretionary exercise of authority in the 18th-century England, reforms to criminal law and its administration in the 19th-century, and the reception and development of criminal law in colonial British North America and after Confederation).