The Police Power

This timely book is a comprehensive treatise on the constitutional and legal history behind the power of the modern state to police its citizens. Dubber explores the roots of the power to police—the most expansive and least limitable of governmental powers—by focusing on its most obvious and problematic manifestation: criminal law.

Mention the phrase Homeland Security and heated debates emerge about state uses and abuses of legal authority. This timely book is a comprehensive treatise on the constitutional and legal history behind the power of the modern state to police its citizens.

Dubber explores the roots of the power to police—the most expansive and least limitable of governmental powers—by focusing on its most obvious and problematic manifestation: criminal law. He argues that the defining characteristics of this power, including the inability to accurately define it, reflect its origins in the discretionary and virtually limitless patriarchal power of the householder over his household. The paradox of patriarchal police power as the most troubling yet least scrutinized of governmental powers can begin to be resolved by subjecting this branch of government to the critical analysis it merits. Dubber shows us that the question must become how can the police power and criminal law together serve the goals of social equity that define and give direction to contemporary democratic societies? This book goes to the heart of this neglected but crucial topic.

Markus Dirk Dubber is professor of law and director of the Buffalo Criminal Law Center at the State University of New York, Buffalo. He is the author of Victims in the War on Crime: The Use and Abuse of Victims'Rights, American Criminal Law (with Mark Kelman) and Criminal Law: Model Penal Code.

Michael Willrich:
This is a fascinating book -- provocative and demanding.

Christopher Tomlins:
The Police Power is a deeply penetrating appraisal of the historical expression and significance of the concept of police.

Arthur L. Rizer III:
Dubber covers it all.

The volume begins with a fascinating discussion of household governance in old Rome... Dubber places 20th-century criminal law in historical perspective and examines the relationship between police power and patriarchy... Recommended.

Jack E. Call:
This book is useful for at least two reasons: 1) It places in historical perspective some aspects of 20th century criminal law that are difficult to understand otherwise; 2) It helps explain the relative inattention to limits on the criminal law.

T. Endicott, J. Getzler & E. Peel:
An ambitious new work of political science...His historical model is already raising interest amongst theorists of crime and policing in Britain.