The example is no longer a ritual that manifests; it is a sign that serves as an obstacle.

The right to punish has been shifted from the vengeance of the sovereign to the defence of society.

penal system must be conceived as a mechanism intended to administer illegalities differentially, not to eliminate them all.

The least-favoured strata of the population did not have, in principle, any privileges: but they benefited, within the margins of what was imposed on them by law and custom, from a space of tolerance, gained by force or obstinacy; and this space was for them so indispensable a

The illegality of property was separated from the illegality of rights.

their offices and who were not only intractable, but ignorant, self-interested and frequently compromised.

This dysfunction of power was related to a central excess: what might be called the monarchical ‘super-power’, which identified the right to punish with the personal power of the sovereign. This theoretical identification made the king the fons justitiae; but the practical consequences of this were to be found even in that which appeared to oppose

The paralysis of justice was due not so much to a weakening as to a badly regulated distribution of power,

lastly, there was too much power exercised by the king, who could suspend courts of justice, alter their decisions, remove magistrates from office, or exile them, and replace them by judges acting under royal commission.