Rake and Rumpole – mavericks for justice: Purity and impurity in legal professionalism

Abstract

TV shows and films about law and lawyers are hugely successful. During its heyday in the late 20th century, Rumpole of the Bailey drew ten million viewers and was watched worldwide. Law programmes are often the only source of knowledge about law for many people. The shows play on the themes of right and wrong, justice and injustice - usually through the medium of the adversarial court process. The two shows compared here, Rake and Rumpole, are emblematic of the legal themes emerging in popular legal culture. I have borrowed from Mary Douglas’s Purity and Danger the idea that the symbolic and professional culture of the Bar is diverse. Both Cleaver Greene and Horace Rumpole express this diversity in their lives and professional practice. Rumpole represents an essentially Whiggish ideal of the Bar and English society while Greene rampages through a Benthamite Australian ideal rejecting authority. The chapter also includes reflections on professionalism and women in law.