The Police Power
Subtitle: Patriarchy And The Foundations Of American Government
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Published: February 28, 2005
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 288
ISBN-13: 9780231132060
Subjects: Central government policies; Police & security services; Legal Reference / Law Profession; Law; USA; Criminal Law - General; Political Freedom & Security - Law Enforcement; Political Science / History & Theory; History; Police power; United States
First sentence: Two basic modes of state governance can be traced throughout the history of Western political thought and practice.
Description: "Mention the phrase "Homeland Security" and heated debates emerge about state uses and abuses of legal authority. However, even before its recent growth, the power to police had represented a vast expansion of legislative and regulative power at all levels of U.S. governance, from the federal government down to the smallest municipalities.

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 primary 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"--BOOK JACKET.