Barry Wright

Quiescent Leviathan? Citizenship and National Security Measures in Late Modernity

The systematic study of political trials and national security measures tends to be associated with the old-fashioned genre of ‘state trials’. Although whiggish or critical reductionism has since tended to prevail, recent social historical work on protest movements, ideology, and rights struggles opens up fresh approaches. The current scholarly shift of attention away from the repressive powers of the state to plural sites of power, while representing an advance, also threatens to relegate the area to neglect. The modern renewal of national security measures can in fact be seen as part of a more complex deployment of law and linked to current debates around state formation, governmentality, and citizenship. As the late modern state is eroded from above by globalization, and from below by demands of identity politics and differentiated citizenship, will such repressive measures be revealed as an anachronism or continue as a final resource of the state in crisis?

Criminal proceedings and the transformative potential of law: Taking historical experiences seriously

Consideration of counter-hegemonic and transformative strategies should be informed by actual experience with the legal system and by careful attention to the particular features of different types of legal proceedings. Sedition procecutions, the main encounter organized progressive social movements had with the criminal law in early 19th century Upper Canada, are analysed to demonstrate these points. The patterns found in these proceedings provide clues about the dynamics, as well as the limits and potential, of legal struggles through the criminal law.