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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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