“The vice of distant knowledge”: Licensing and the geography of jurisdiction on the Scottish wartime Home Front
This article considers how licensing law conceives and practices jurisdiction. It examines the limits of attempts to define and exploit jurisdiction in the regulation of social problems connected to alcohol. Using the case study of a prohibition on the sale of spirits in the Scottish town of Motherw...
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| Format: | Article |
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Elsevier
2017
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| Online Access: | https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/47364/ |
| _version_ | 1848797527347822592 |
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| author | Beckingham, David |
| author_facet | Beckingham, David |
| author_sort | Beckingham, David |
| building | Nottingham Research Data Repository |
| collection | Online Access |
| description | This article considers how licensing law conceives and practices jurisdiction. It examines the limits of attempts to define and exploit jurisdiction in the regulation of social problems connected to alcohol. Using the case study of a prohibition on the sale of spirits in the Scottish town of Motherwell during the First World War, it analyses how ‘vertical’ legal appeals through higher courts intersected with everyday ‘horizontal’ challenges to the jurisdiction of the local licensing magistrates as the ban pushed drinkers and the problems of drunkenness onto neighbouring authorities. Those higher court challenges importantly confirmed the localness of licensing, but they could not guarantee the effectiveness of the magistrates’ policy. By showing the potentially disruptive daily habits of ordinary citizens and urban infrastructure, the article promotes a social and material legal geography of licensing. In conclusion, it calls for a critical examination of the ‘local’ in local government, and the political geographies that result from appeals to space and scale in the division of governance functions. |
| first_indexed | 2025-11-14T20:05:18Z |
| format | Article |
| id | nottingham-47364 |
| institution | University of Nottingham Malaysia Campus |
| institution_category | Local University |
| last_indexed | 2025-11-14T20:05:18Z |
| publishDate | 2017 |
| publisher | Elsevier |
| recordtype | eprints |
| repository_type | Digital Repository |
| spelling | nottingham-473642020-05-04T19:53:45Z https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/47364/ “The vice of distant knowledge”: Licensing and the geography of jurisdiction on the Scottish wartime Home Front Beckingham, David This article considers how licensing law conceives and practices jurisdiction. It examines the limits of attempts to define and exploit jurisdiction in the regulation of social problems connected to alcohol. Using the case study of a prohibition on the sale of spirits in the Scottish town of Motherwell during the First World War, it analyses how ‘vertical’ legal appeals through higher courts intersected with everyday ‘horizontal’ challenges to the jurisdiction of the local licensing magistrates as the ban pushed drinkers and the problems of drunkenness onto neighbouring authorities. Those higher court challenges importantly confirmed the localness of licensing, but they could not guarantee the effectiveness of the magistrates’ policy. By showing the potentially disruptive daily habits of ordinary citizens and urban infrastructure, the article promotes a social and material legal geography of licensing. In conclusion, it calls for a critical examination of the ‘local’ in local government, and the political geographies that result from appeals to space and scale in the division of governance functions. Elsevier 2017-12 Article PeerReviewed Beckingham, David (2017) “The vice of distant knowledge”: Licensing and the geography of jurisdiction on the Scottish wartime Home Front. Geoforum, 87 . pp. 28-37. ISSN 0016-7185 Jurisdiction; Legal geography; Licensing; Motherwell; Scale; Scotland http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0016718517302762?via%3Dihub doi:10.1016/j.geoforum.2017.09.015 doi:10.1016/j.geoforum.2017.09.015 |
| spellingShingle | Jurisdiction; Legal geography; Licensing; Motherwell; Scale; Scotland Beckingham, David “The vice of distant knowledge”: Licensing and the geography of jurisdiction on the Scottish wartime Home Front |
| title | “The vice of distant knowledge”: Licensing and the geography of jurisdiction on the Scottish wartime Home Front |
| title_full | “The vice of distant knowledge”: Licensing and the geography of jurisdiction on the Scottish wartime Home Front |
| title_fullStr | “The vice of distant knowledge”: Licensing and the geography of jurisdiction on the Scottish wartime Home Front |
| title_full_unstemmed | “The vice of distant knowledge”: Licensing and the geography of jurisdiction on the Scottish wartime Home Front |
| title_short | “The vice of distant knowledge”: Licensing and the geography of jurisdiction on the Scottish wartime Home Front |
| title_sort | “the vice of distant knowledge”: licensing and the geography of jurisdiction on the scottish wartime home front |
| topic | Jurisdiction; Legal geography; Licensing; Motherwell; Scale; Scotland |
| url | https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/47364/ https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/47364/ https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/47364/ |