David Langwallner, The Relevance of Jurisprudence to Law Part 3, Cassandra Voices, 12 September 2024
Extract
[…] Foucault makes very relevant contributions to Jurisprudence and the practice of law.
First, the transplantation of Jeremy Bentham’s idea of the panopticon – the all-seeing surveillance prison such as Kilmainham in Dublin – is in Foucault’s view a depiction of modern society, where a uniform doctrine is enforced in schools, law courts and hospitals, leading to blind conformity.
Foucault presaged the age of Surveillance Capitalism and 24-hour data surveillance in Ireland, achieved in camera in the Quirke Case through the representations of the Minister for Justice Helen McEntee. Thus, we have a global panopticon wherein the value of privacy and freedom is thrown to the wolves.
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