Throughout the Middle Ages, judicial prac:ticewas-amultiplier of royal power. Now when this new governmental rationality develops in the sixteenth century, and especially from the start of the seventeenthcentury,law provides_th<:: basis for any one who wants to limit in one way or another this indefinite extension of raison d'Etatthat is becoming embodied in a police state. Legal theory and judicial institutions no longer serve as the multiplier, but rather as the subtractor ofroyal power.

Michel Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics, loc. 161