Nobles ran their territories like Mafia bosses. ibid.
They could intimidate juries and bribe judges. ibid.
The most accomplished lawyer to practise in the star chamber was Edward Coke. ibid.
The Petition of Right: this document sat somewhere between a list of grievances and a bill of rights. ibid.
Four centuries ago the law itself would be put on the rack. At one end was the king’s law and at the other the common law. Which system would win and which would snap? For over a decade parliament’s doors were locked. The king ruled alone and supreme. ibid.
Central to our policy Habeas Corpus: it was a principle whose power would grow immensely. ibid.
The common law and its liberties had won. ibid.
Over 80,000 soldiers died on the battlefield. By the end of the war parliament had emerged triumphant. The civil war like many of the era’s seismic upheavals was born out of legal disputes. ibid.
Barristers can’t pick and choose what cases they take on. They call this the cab rank rule. ibid.
All cases in England are carried out in the name of the King. Rex v Defendant. Could Rex be against Rex? ibid.
Charles repeatedly declined to plead. ibid.
Habeas Corpus is a remedy against arbitrary arrests and unlawful imprisonment. ibid.
He who represents himself has a fool for a client. ibid.
The Conditions in Newgate Jail were so bad that one in ten prisoners died there. But Habeas Corpus was waiting to strike again. ibid.
Over the course of the seventeenth century the liberties of the English had undergone an extraordinary change for the better. ibid.
1771: Habeas Corpus had served Englishmen well. Could it now deal with an horrific abuse which the English were inflicting on others? The Thames docks. A legal document is raced down to a ship that is about to set sail with its cargo for Jamaica ... The cargo a slave named James Somerset ... Gives the prisoner the power to compel his jailer to justify his imprisonment. A realisation swept across the slave trade. The very legality of slavery itself was going to be tested in court. ibid.
In his judgment Lord Mansfield said that the state of slavery is of such a nature so odious that the English common law could never accept it. ibid.
One single writ of habeas corpus had released not just one man from bondage but was to mark the start of freedom for all the 15,000 slaves then in England. ibid.
Habeas Corpus remains part of English law. But it rarely needs to be used today ... We simply take it for granted. ibid.
The story of how barristers took central stage. ibid.
He had no barrister to represent him ... This was probably his last view of daylight. He was hanged for his crime. John Smith was a boy of just fifteen. The Strange Case of the Law III: The Story of English Justice: Presumed Innocent
A rather crude and biased legal process was remoulded to give us what we have today – the fair trial. ibid.
More than 200 offences were punishable by death. ibid.
William Garrow, the son of a Scottish schoolmaster, Garrow was called to the bar in 1783 ... His lasting impact came from the time he spent at the Old Bailey. ibid.
Garrow was famed for his aggressive style of cross-examination. ibid.
Innocent until proven guilty ... a hallowed concept. ibid.
Thomas Hardy and two other members of the London Corresponding Society were to stand trial for High Treason ... The government had another 800 arrested warrants waiting to be executed. ibid.
The adversarial trial was perhaps England’s best and most benevolent export. ibid.
Forging a banknote was a capital crime ... The Forgery Act: 120 statutes were transformed into one. ibid.
With consummate skill Robert Peel did more to reform the criminal justice system than almost any other Home Secretary. ibid.
Governments relied on the Riot Act. ibid.
Sir Edward Marshall Hall whose career spanned the late Victorian and Edwardian eras. It is thought he may have helped more people to escape the noose than any other barrister. ibid.
This new court showed that English law was strong enough to acknowledge and deal with its mistakes. ibid.
The common law currently faces a serious challenge ... Judges once the creators of the law have largely had the role taken from them by parliament. ibid.
Since the 1970s government seems to have become increasingly addicted to enacting new laws ... I call it legislative diarrhoea. ibid.
The Home Office special official committees on home defence have recently been supervising the preparation of new war laws. Duncan Campbell, Secret Society: In Time of Crisis, BBC 1987
The laws are intended to control not just panic but dissent as well. ibid.
The plans also cover conscript labour: thousands of people with many different skills would be needed. ibid.
We live in and by the law. It makes us what we are: citizens and employees and doctors and spouses and people who own things. It is sword, shield, and menace: we insist on our wage, or refuse to pay our rent, or are forced to forfeit penalties, or are closed up in jail, all in the name of what our abstract and ethereal sovereign, the law, has decreed. And we argue about what it has decreed, even when the books that are supposed to record its commands and directions are silent; we act then as if law had muttered its doom, too low to be heard distinctly. We are subjects of law’s empire, liegemen to its methods and ideals, bound in spirit while we debate what we must therefore do. Ronald Dworkin, Law’s Empire preface, 1986
It is easy to be disgruntled if you are denied rights and freedoms to which you feel entitled. But if you are not coherent, if you cannot put into words what it is that displeases you and why it is unfair and should change, then you are dismissed as an unreasonable whiner. You may be lectured about perseverance and patience, life as a test, the need to accept the higher wisdom of others. Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Nomad: From Islam to America
Good-bye, Allan. My lawyer will call your lawyer. Play It Again, Sam 1972 starring Woody Allen & Diane Keaton & Jerry Lacy & Tony Roberts & Sisan Anspach & Jennifer Salt & Joy Bang & Viva & Susanne Zenor & Diana Davila et al, director Herbert Ross
I respect the law just fine; I’m just not in awe of it, I’m not encumbered by it. The Judge 2014 starring Robert Downey junior & Robert Duvall & Vera Farmiga & Vincent D'Onofrio & Jeremy Strong & Billy Bob Thornton & Sarah Lancaster & David Krumholtz & Emma Tremblay et al, director David Dobkin, Downey opening scene
They always need lawyers after a revolution to straighten out the legal end. The Last Tycoon 1976 starring Robert de Niro & Jack Nicholson & Tony Curtis & Robert Mitchum & Jeanne Moreau & Donald Pleasence & Ray Milland & Dana Andrews & Ingrid Boulting & Peter Strauss & Theresa Russell et al, director Elia Kazan
George Maben was sentenced to thirteen years in prison – two less than the standard tariff for premeditated murder. The judge described Maben as a kind and caring person and unlikely to kill again. The family were horrified. Murdering the Mother in Law: Countdown to Murder, Channel 5 2015
George Maben’s sentence was revised by the Court of Appeal. He was given an extra five years in prison. ibid.
The main foundations of every state, new states as well as ancient or composite ones, are good laws and good arms – you cannot have good laws without good arms, and where there are good arms, good laws inevitably follow. Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince
But I am Chancellor of England. And I will not have it said that the Law acts against the people. The people themselves have rights. Sword of Sherwood Forest 1960 starring Richard Greene & Peter Cushing & Sarah Branch & Nigel Green & Vanda Godsell & Edwin Richfield & Charles Lamb & Richard Pasco & Niall MacGinnis & Jack Gwillim & Oliver Reed & Patrick Crean & Dennis Lotis & Derren Nesbitt et al, director Terence Fisher, heroic dude
Where the law ends tyranny begins. Henry Fielding
It is legal because I wish it. Louis XIV
By the late 1990s, the consequences of Japan’s policy on legal training were jaw-dropping by international comparison. Germany had one lawyer for every 724 head of the population. Britain one for every 656, and the United States one for every 285 citizens. In Japan, there was one lawyer for every 5,995 people. Basically, the mafia occupies a huge segment of Japan's de facto legal system, which is, of course, what some people observe about lawyers in the US. Misha Glenny, McMafia