Greetings, my friends.

I am delighted to hear that concerns akin to my own continue to animate the work of leading scholars in this University community. I refer to the public lecture given recently at the Darwin Lecture Theatre at UCL by the Dean of the Faculty of Laws at UCL, Dame Hazel Genn,

Dean Genn’s argument that the courts have a role to play in maintaining the well-being of all citizens almost as fundamental as that played by hospitals may have struck her auditors, none of them so much as a century old, as novel. Hers was a tune I had myself sung in my youth so many years ago.

I often compared enlightened legislators to physicians, and I was very well aware of the pains arising from the factitious delay, vexation and expense inseparable from procedure in the legal system. I demanded that the laws of England should be made clear, cognoscible, certain, consistent, complete, compact and available to every man who was to be made to abide by them. I foresaw a time when as a result of the improvement of legal procedure, the courts would be open without intermission rather as, with less salutary results, public houses have come to be today. I pointed out that the deaths and illnesses brought on by miserable conditions of incarceration were a needless and profligate squandering of human productive power. I showed that most parties brought into court had reason to regard the operations of ‘their’ legal system with a mixture of incomprehension and hopelessness.

It is perplexing to see one set of society’s institutions being expanded for the salutary purpose of serving health in all its forms, while another set creates or exacerbates health problems to an alarming degree in the pursuit of the equally useful end of justice. To Dame Hazel’s telling observations of the inhumane-ness of such ill-considered practices, I can but add that I have long since demonstrated their inexpediency. But will it suffice to demonstrate to your political masters the tragic costs of such deficiencies? I fear not. It hath been ever thus.

So my friends my battle cry is—law cognoscible, justice accessible.

J.B.