capitalism

78 Collectivism
Coke induced or compelled James to forego the attempt to
withdraw cases from the Courts for his Majesty’s personal
determination. But no achievement of sound argument, or
stroke of enlightened statesmanship, ever established a
rule more essential to the very existence of the constitution
than the principle enforced by the obstinacy and the fallacies
of the great Chief-Justice.
With respect to the second principle, law as common to
all, Coke developed a model of the law as a single national
limit on all who would limit the freedom of others. The
church, local barons, and specialized tribunals and corporations
all claimed powers over individuals—powers that
Coke successfully argued were reserved to the law courts of
record. He issued countless orders of prohibition and praemunire,
barring these extralegal institutions from arresting,
imprisoning, or taking the property of ordinary individuals.
The third principle, law as a limit on officials, implied
for Coke that law set standards of conduct for officials and
ensured those subject to their authority that the procedures
and rules of fairness embodied in the law could be
enforced. Thus, in Semayne’s Case, a person who barred a
sheriff’s man from entering his house without identifying
himself committed no crime because “every man’s home is
his castle.” In Rooke’s Case, a landowner ordered to pay for
a drainage ditch was entitled to a hearing and to apportionment
of the costs among the others who benefited.
Coke held that law was a source of and a limit even the
powers of Parliament and the King. The King, he argued,
could hold property only according to and within the protections
of law and could exercise powers that were limited by
what Coke argued was the ancient constitution of England.
Parliament could not, as he noted in Bonham’s Case, enact a
law against right and reason, by making a single entity both
accuser and judge in its own cause. Judges, too, were governed
by “what a judge ought to do,” including to rule in
cases before them only according to the reason of law.
The fourth principle inherent in Coke’s legal theories is
that law is a source of rights. Coke was pivotal in reframing
the feudal common law into a law governing commerce
and empire. In so doing, he took old ideas about property
and recast them into new formulae that answered new questions.
Chiefly, he protected what we would now call rights,
but which he saw as those interests and privileges in property
and offices that were understood as the result of long
practice and custom, barring the King from taking privileges
from Parliament, as in Bates’ Case, and barring
Parliament from limiting the prerogative of the King, as in
the Case of Non Obstante. Overall, Coke’s common law
protected the customary rights of the subject from interference
from all, whether from interference by a neighbor, a
sheriff, the King, or Parliament.
See also Common Law; Constitutionalism; Dicey, Albert Venn;
Judiciary
SMS
Further Readings
Bowen, Catherine Drinker. The Lion and the Throne: The Life and
Times of Sir Edward Coke (1552–1634). Boston: Little, Brown,
1991.
Boyer, Allen D. Law, Liberty, and Parliament: Selected Essays on the
Writings of Sir Edward Coke. Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund, 2004.
———. Sir Edward Coke and the Elizabethan Age. Palo Alto, CA:
Stanford University Press, 2003.
Holdsworth, William S. “The Influence of Coke on the Development
of English Law.” Essays in Legal History. Paul Vinogradoff, ed.
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1914.
Hostettler, John. Sir Edward Coke: A Force for Freedom. Chichester,
UK: Barry Rose Law Publishers, 1998.
Sheppard, Steve, ed. The Selected Writings of Sir Edward Coke.
3 vols. Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund, 2003.
Stoner, James R. Common Law and Liberal Theory: Coke, Hobbes
and the Origins of American Constitutionalism. Lawrence:
University Press of Kansas, 1994.
White, Stephen D. White. Sir Edward Coke and “The Grievances of
the Commonwealth,” 1621–1628. Chapel Hill: University of
North Carolina Press, 1979.
COLLECTIVISM
Collectivism, as the political theorist Andrew Vincent has
noted, was first used in the late 19th century to refer to
those writers and intellectuals who sought to use the state
and the apparatus of government to control or regulate the
economy and other aspects of civil society. It also has been
employed to refer to those who favor an organic view of
society, as opposed to individualism. Collectivism is sometimes
used to designate the same philosophical approach to
social and political life as the term socialism, particularly in
the sense of the favoring of the collective ownership of the
means of production.
Collectivism may be contrasted with individualism in
the areas of methodology and the explanation of social phenomena,
and in terms of social philosophy and ethics.
Methodologically, the individualist emphasizes the
actions of individuals and the consequences of these
actions, whether intended or unintended. Individualists are
of course prepared to acknowledge that the actions of individuals
occur within a social context, and also that some of
their actions may produce results that in turn affect us, as,
say, in the case of interest rates or an economic depression.
Yet for the methodological individualist, to understand the
social world, it is necessary to conceptualize all phenomena
in the social world as ultimately reflecting the actions and
preferences of individuals. Nevertheless, there is some disagreement
among methodological individualists as to what
degree acting individuals should be looked at in social and
cultural terms.
Methodological collectivism exists in both strong and
weaker forms. Strong versions of methodological collectivism