An Ending: Not a Story

Summary

This final part of History and the Law is deliberately not labelled a chapter, in order to match ‘A Beginning’, which reproduces Stephen Dunn’s poem ‘History’. There is further reflection on history and the law as narrative, and the practical difficulties facing any historian who attempts to write about the law. The development (and their demise) of legal aid and advice in twentieth-century Britain is related to William Godwin’s writing about law that didn’t happen – wasn’t enacted – in the Commonwealth period. Such narrative difficulties in writing about the law are discussed in reference to the law imaginings of Franz Kafka, Walter Benjamin, and George Agamben.