Detention without Trial in Britain: A History

The many constitutional crises which occurred in England in the seventeenth century, required a theoretical revision of a number of concepts in the political discourse. The effects of this revision did not only occur at theoretical levels. They were also visible at the level of political decision-making. In the seventeenth century, when arbitrary uses of the prerogative by Charles I, Charles II and James II in order to exercise detention without trial were criticised by Parliament, there emerged an implicit review of the contours of arbitrary power in the political discourse requiring an articulation of the boundaries of the use of prerogative. It was by the virtue of such boundaries that the scope of deference to liberty or the measures aimed at containing licentiousness would be determined.