Abstract

I want to begin this paper by recalling a once-lively school of English political and legal thinking which has fallen undeservedly into neglect. I refer to the pluralists, notably the lawyer F. W. Maitland, the religious scholar J. N. Figgis, and, early in their careers, the political theorists Harold Laski and G. D. H. Cole. All were influenced by the writings of the German legal scholar Otto von Gierke, which Maitland as editor and translator had first introduced into England. The pluralists' concerns were at once political and legal; virtually alone among English writers in this century until the 1970s, their work avoided the barrenness that comes of treating political theory and jurisprudence as unrelated enterprises. I shall describe the problems that preoccupied them and some of their resultant theories, and also the way in which specifically legal doctrine was both a target of their criticism and an important element in their thinking