SOME WIT, SOME WISDOM

Courts are often seen as dry places swarming with serious men and women in black robes debating contentious disputes. But genius blooms in strange places and UK courts have shown the witty side of things

- R.E.Meggary, Q.C

LAWYER'S LIBRARY

The practising lawyer must to some extent share the responsibility for the writing of law books: “Headnotes arranged vertically make a digest. Headnotes arranged horizontally make a textbook. Textbooks arranged alphabetically make an encyclopedia. Every few years some investigator has to break up one of these works into its constituent atoms, add some more headnotes from recent decisions, stir well, and give us the latest book on the subject. And so law libraries grow." Yet even in the most authoritative works, genius sometimes blooms in strange places.

JUDICIAL PROCESS

Much has been spoken on the course of the judicial process. One may begin with two remarks of the great Holmes J. “I recognise without hesitation that judges do and must legislate, but they do so only interstitially; they are confined from molar to molecular motions. A common-law judge could not say I think the doctrine of consideration is a bit of "historical nonsense and shall not enforce it in my court”. Again, “the vindication of the obvious is sometimes more important than the elucidation of the obscure".

At times, however, even truth itself may be spurned. “Truth, like all other good things, may be loved unwisely – may be pursued too keenly - may cost too much. And surely the meanness and the mischief of prying into a man's confidential consultations with his legal adviser, the general evil of infusing reserve and. dissimulation, uneasiness, and suspicion, and fear, into those communications which must take place, and which unless in a condition of perfect security, must take place uselessly or worse, are too great a price to pay for truth itself."

DAMAGES