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14 May 2021 / Alec Samuels
Issue: 7932 / Categories: Features , Profession
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Book review: Law in a time of crisis

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48984
  • Author: Jonathan Sumption
  • Publisher: Profile Books Ltd
  • ISBN: 9781788167116
  • Price: £16.99

Released from the restraints of judicial office, Lord Sumption is once again a free spirit, crisply, elegantly, logically and challengingly examining our cherished legal institutions and theories and practices. It is a pity that Lord Sumption is not a real lord anymore, not eligible as a retired law lord to sit in the legislature.

As good old Lord Denning used to say, a good judge has to be more than a mere lawyer—he must be a man of science or maths or history or literature or philosophy or whatever. Sumption was eminently well qualified—a scholarly historian, especially in mediaeval history, of real repute. Aristotle, Coke, Dicey, Marx, Hemingway, all are quoted, among others. He found the old law reports and the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography very useful in his cases. As a distinguished historian, he did not approve of statue wreckers; rage against the past is pointless.

Diversity in the judiciary has become

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MOVERS & SHAKERS

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Arc Pensions Law—Matthew Swynnerton

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NEWS
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NLJ this week: Renters’ Rights revolution begins—brace for tribunal chaos

The abolition of assured shorthold tenancies and section 21 evictions marks the beginning of a ‘brave new world’ for England’s rental sector, writes Daniel Bacon of Seddons GSC

NLJ this week: Civil procedure gets a spring overhaul
Stephen Gold’s latest Civil Way column rounds up a flurry of procedural and regulatory changes reshaping housing, alternative dispute resolution (ADR) and personal injury litigation
NLJ this week: Why GP complaints are going nowhere
Patients are being systematically failed by an NHS complaints regime that is opaque, poorly enforced and often stacked against them, argues Charles Davey of The Barrister Group
NLJ this week: Prenups meet a jurisdictional brick wall
A wealthy Russian divorce battle has produced a sharp warning about trying to challenge foreign nuptial agreements in the wrong English court. Writing in NLJ this week, Vanessa Friend and Robert Jackson of Hodge Jones & Allen examine Timokhin v Timokhina, where the High Court enforced Russian judgments arising from a prenuptial agreement despite arguments based on the landmark Radmacher decision
NLJ this week: Has Rylands v Fletcher come back from the dead?
An obscure Victorian tort may be heading for an unexpected revival after a significant Privy Council ruling that could reshape liability for dangerous escapes, according to Richard Buckley, barrister and emeritus professor of law at the University of Reading
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