constraints of specialization which seem to increase everywhere you
look. In practical terms, this is one of the central difficulties of our
times. This book is a renewed attempt to identify and describe why this
might be the case.

I owe general thanks, for criticism, support, stimulation, and encour-
agement over the years, to Beverley Brown, Roger Cotterrell, Costas
Douzinas, Neil Duxbury, Rolando Gaete, Peter Goodrich, John
Griffith, Anthony Hopwood, Joe Jacob, Niki Lacey, Martin Loughlin,
Peter Miller, Les Moran, David Nelken, Alain Pottage, Mike Power,
Boaventura de Souza Santos, Anton Schütz, Brad Sherman, David
Sugarman, Gunther Teubner, Philip Windsor, Lucia Zedner, and no
doubt many others whom I now forget to mention. I owe a debt to
Nancy Robinson for help in tracking biblical references which were
lodged in my brain but not in my files.

Special thanks are owed to Simon Roberts for encouragement over
a long period of time. On the basis that the first cut is the deepest, I
should also acknowledge the debts I owe to Alan Thomson, Nick
Jackson, John Wightman, and Ian Grigg-Spall, for making me do some
thinking about law in the first place. The influence of one's teachers no
doubt recedes with the passage of time, but I should also take this
opportunity to commemorate the late Clive Parry, whose idiosyncratic
vision made a profound impression on me as a third-year undergradu-
ate. I dread to think what he would have made of this book.

My thanks are also due to Richard Hart for being enormously help-
ful at the pre-production stage, to his former colleague at the press,
Elissa Soave, for overseeing the production of this book, and to Kate
Elliott for skilful editing and for resolute humour in the face of what
can only be described as adversity.

WTM

Burnham-on-Crouch
October 1996

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