How Lawyers Think
The Legal Mind. By Gerald Abrahams. (H.F.L. 18s.) ' LEGAL, literature intended for lay consumption tends on the whole to be singularly unenticing. There are, of course, exceptions. TO the recapitulation of causes celebres a succession of petits maftreh Marjoribanks, Lustgarten, Bechofer Roberts, have devoted notable gifts for atmospheric narrative. Illuminated by the flaring gaslight of their appropriately Edwardian prose, Wallace pursues his search through the suburbs for Menlove Gardens East; from the dock Seddon makes masonic signs at the weeping Mr. Justice BucknlU' Spilsbury, specimen in hand, is unshakeably confident that he sag something nasty in the lower colon. Entertaining if faintly revolt- ing, these works have conferred and have achieved a certain immor tality: stiffened by the fading scarlet ranks of Notable British Trials, supported by bound volumes of Punch and topped by the Badminton Library of Field Sports, their niche in the smoking room is humble but secure. Elsewhere the prospect is bleak. Retired QCs, yielding to the importunities of the popular Press, prove less nimble with pen than tongue; judges, distilling into slim volumes the accumulated wisdom of a lifetime, produce reflections which seldom startle; memoirs accumulate whose tedium is relieved only by those astringent ance' dotes "of blighting snubs, vindictive retorts and scandalous Otis' carriages of justice so dear to the forensic mind." Faced with these unilluminating memorials of lives devoted to the successful practice of the law, the layman may well be tempted to wonder for what exactly the glittering prizes are awarded. Succel at the Bar, he feels, cannot be entirely a matter of industry an histrionic skill. He suspects perhaps that the secret may be fount,' in chambers, but there he is never allowed to penetrate far beYollr, the clerk's office. As twilight deepens in the Temple a lamp sup burns from Leithen's window; one knows that he is working steada, on at the big Argentine Bank case or the Chilean Arbitration, art° from time to time there is a glimpse of a note being made, a Page being turned, a hand taking from the shelves a volume of the Lew, Reports. But glimpses they remain; not even Sandy Arbuthnot would dream of pressing for details when a brief reference to
heavy batch of Privy Council appeals is the only explanation offered for the grey pallor and enervating taedium vitae from which relief can be found only in the instigation of a Balkans rebellion or the poaching of Strathlarrig water.
' Perhaps because they think it would be boring, lawyers tend to be reticent about the nature of their employment; and this is indeed a pity. The law affords an intellectual exercise of the utmost refine- ment and complexity; and the fact that speculation is confined within strict limits and must be in accordance with certain basic rules adds both to its difficulty and to its fascination. The quint- essence of the law is to be found not in accounts of criminal trials or in judicial pronouncements on the liberty of the subject or the Inadvisability of penal reform; it is present rather in the effortless skill with which judges like Jessel could elucidate and apply the most recondite doctrines of equity; or with which the Law Lords can reduce to sense and meaning an apparently hopeless chaos of con- flicting statutory provisions. Matters like these are the lawyers' undisputed province; in dealing with them they are capable of superb professional competence.
Mr. Abrahams's book, a painstaking effort to elucidate the nature of legal enquiry and the concepts with which lawyers habitually deal, Is a step in the right direction. Its author and publisher hope that, though primarily intenckd for law students, it may be of interest to the general reader; and this hope is not unfounded. True, the general reader might be materially assisted by an earlier explanation of the fundamental rules of the game: the hierarchy of courts, the doctrine of precedents, the sources and structure of the law itself. And he may be slightly put off by the accents, faint but unmistakable, of the adult education lecturer; the tendency to be facetious, to labour the obvious, to evade the more complicated refinements as too difficult for untrained intellects. But he will certainly acquire by the way some fascinating fragments of learning.
CHARLES MONTEITH
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