Richard Harrison takes inspiration from a legendary musical to reflect on recent reforms
It is a considerable challenge to comment on issues arising from the recent changes to the civil litigation system by analogy to the musical phenomenon and film Les Miserables.
The character Javert is, in very brief summary, a representative of the establishment who remorselessly pursues the hero Valjean out of an obsessive sense of propriety and desire to uphold the strict letter of the law.
Javert can be compared to those who so enthusiastically took up the recommendations of the Jackson costs review and brought them to fruition in the April 2013 CPR amendments.
Some quotes from the original source, Victor Hugo:
“Probity, sincerity, candour, conviction, the sense of duty, are things which may become hideous when wrongly directed; but which, even when hideous, remain grand: their majesty, the majesty peculiar to the human conscience, clings to them in the midst of horror; they are virtues which have one vice—error.”
The songs are more entertaining than the prose,
