Eugene Genovese criticized this position, arguing that "the fashionable relegation of law to the rank of a superstructural and derivative phenomenon obscures the degree of autonomy it creates for itself. In modern societies, at least, the theoretical and moral foundations of the legal order and the actual, specific history of its ideas and institutions influence, step by step, the wider social order and system of class rule, for no class in the modern Western world could rule for long without some ability to present itself as the guardian of the interests and sentiments of those being ruled.... the law cannot be viewed as something passive and reflective, but must be viewed as an active, partially autonomous force, which mediated the several classes and compelled the rulers to bend to the demands of the ruled...." [Eugene D. Genovese, "The Hegemonic Function of Law," in Roll Jordan Roll: The World Slaves Made (1972), 25-6]

E.P. Thompson similarly argued that "The rhetoric and the rules of a society are something a great deal more than sham. In the same moment they may modify, in profound ways, the behavior of the powerful, and mystify the powerless. They may disguise the true realities of power, but, at the same time, they may curb that power and check its intrusions. And it is often from within that very rhetoric that a radical critique of the practice of society is developed." [E.P. Thompson, Whigs and Hunters: The Origin of the Black Act (1975), 265].