"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 Langbein correct in suggesting that criminal law is of little political significance to governments and of little relevance to questions of power? In commenting on Langbein's position, address political trials and national security uses of the criminal law system, as well as the more routine business of the criminal courts. In your discussion of the latter please give examples with a brief paragraph in each of these 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 of English criminal laws and institutions in colonial British North America.