Preface

Summary

I wish I could present this collection of lectures and articles as a rounded philosophy of law and justice. While I have things to say on both subjects, I aspire to be neither Rawls (whom I did not know) nor Dworkin nor Sen (both of whom I know and admire). This is partly at least because what they do is macro-justice, while I do micro-justice. Although in a moment of self-parody many years ago I added ‘changing the world’ to my banal list of hobbies in Who's Who (a recreation which the Daily Mail, whenever it denounces me, cites with the utmost solemnity), the most a barrister or judge can ordinarily do is change the future for a few individuals.

As a judge, too, one can occasionally, superior courts permitting, change the law for the better. While this book does not include any of my judgments (a collection of extrajudicial writings is vanity enough), I hope I have done something in this direction. I have at least enjoyed the experience of first being declared a heretic by my judicial superiors for advancing the boundaries of what citizens can legitimately and enforceably expect from the state and then, as heretics do if they are spared the flames, watching the heresy become orthodoxy.

It may have nothing to do with anything, but reading English at Cambridge between 1959 and 1961 still strikes me as the best thing I ever did.