‘Bufflehead’ and ‘Coxcomb’: Bushel’s Case
According to Clarendon, Sir John Kelyng (pronounced ‘Keeling’) was ‘a person of eminent learning, eminent suffering, never wore his gown after Rebellion, and was always in gaol’. As a judge,...
How Machiavellian was Machiavelli?
In his slim book The Prince (published 1532, written in 1513), Niccolò Machiavelli made his now notorious assertion that the prince who hopes to succeed must learn ‘how not to...
Thomas More’s voices
Sir Thomas More (1478-1535): Henry VIII’s Chancellor, Erasmus’ intellectual sparring partner, Tyndale’s trenchant critic, the author of the dreamy Utopia (1516), canonised by Pope Pius XI and declared the patron...
The impact of Coronavirus, part 2: attending hearings in the Crown Court remotely
On 25 March 2020, the Coronavirus Act 2020 (‘the 2020 Act’) was given Royal Assent. Most of its provisions came into force immediately (s. 87). Almost all of them will...
Causation and Cleopatra’s nose
A nose can be a curious thing: so too causation. I In his Pensées (1669), published from an array of notes following his death, Blaise Pascal expressed a characteristically interesting view...
Vote for Rawls!
John Rawls (1921–2002) is one of the most influential philosophers of the twentieth century. In his classic work of high liberalism, A Theory of Justice (1971), he devised one of the greatest...
Summer Reading 2019
This week’s blog contains a few suggestions for summer reading. Sun, sea and law: what more could you want for a perfect holiday? Robert Harris, An Officer and a Spy...
Casement and Capitol Hill: on grammar
July 1916. Britain is at war. The detonation of 19 charges buried in mines dug by British tunnelling units under the German trenches has recently marked the beginning of a...
The letter of the law
Even black-letter law is not limited to words on a printed page: beneath and behind statutory language, values and principles which are often nowhere to be seen in the statute’s...
Legally binding: when do criminal statutes bind the Crown?
In a previous blog post, Alex du Sautoy and Vincent Scully considered the Supreme Court’s decision in R (Black) v Secretary of State for Justice [2017] UKSC 81 (‘No smoke...