Ashes and Sparks: Essays On Law and Justice

by Stephen Sedley

Overview

As a practicing barrister, the Rt. Hon. Lord Justice Sedley wrote widely on legal and non-legal matters, and continued to do so after becoming a judge in 1992. This anthology contains classic articles, previously unpublished essays and lecture transcripts. To each, he has added reflections on what has transpired since or an explanation of the British legal and political context that originally prompted it. Covering the history, engineering and architecture of the justice system, their common theme relates to the author's experiences as a barrister and judge, most notably in relation to the constitutional changes which have emerged in the last twenty years in the United Kingdom.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781107000957
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	02/24/2011
Pages:	446
Product dimensions:	6.20(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

The Rt. Hon. Lord Justice Sedley is a judge of the Court of Appeal of England and Wales. Since being called to the Bar in 1964, he has been involved in high-profile cases and inquiries including the death of Blair Peach, the Bridgewater Four and Stefan Kiszko appeals and the contempt hearing against Kenneth Baker, then Home Secretary. He became a QC in 1983 and was appointed a High Court judge in 1992, serving in the Queen's Bench Division. In 1999 he was appointed to the Court of Appeal as a Lord Justice of Appeal. He is currently an honorary Professor of Law at Warwick University and the University of Wales at Cardiff, and the Judicial Visitor at University College London. His many lectures include the 1995 Paul Sieghart Memorial Lecture, the 1996 Radcliffe Lectures (with Lord Nolan), the 1998 Hamlyn Lectures, the 2005 Holdsworth Lecture and the 2006 Blackstone Lecture. He chaired the Judicial Studies Board's working party on the Human Rights Act 1998 and has, since 1999, been President of the British Institute of Human Rights.

Table of Contents

Part I. History: 1. Victors' justice; 2. Above it all; 3. Reading their rights; 4. From victim to suspect; 5. Farewell sovereignty; 6. No law at all; 7. The sound of silence; 8. The spark in the ashes; 9. Wringing out the fault; 10. Everything and nothing; 11. Skulls and crossbones; Part II. Judgery: 12. Justice miscarried; 13. The Guildford Four; 14. Declining the brief; 15. Big lawyers and little lawyers; 16. Parliament, government, courts; 17. Judges in lodgings; 18. Mice peeping out of oakum; 19. Justice in Chile; 20. Never do anything for the first time; 21. Rarely pure and never simple; 22. Law and plumbing; 23. The laws of documents; Part III. Justice: 24. The right to know; 25. The moral economy of judicial review; 26. Policy and law; 27. Responsibility and the law; 28. The Crown in its own courts; 29. Human rights - who needs them?; 30. Fundamental values - but which?; 31. Overcoming pragmatism; 32. Sex, libels and video-surveillance; 33. This beats me; 34. Public inquiries: a cure or a disease?; 35. Human rights: a 21st century agenda; 36. Are human rights universal, and does it matter?; 37. Bringing rights home: time to start a family?; 38. The three wise monkeys visit the marketplace of ideas.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"The best book I've read so far this year… You could have no interest in the law and read [this] book for pure intellectual delight, for the exquisite, finely balanced prose, the prickly humor, the knack of artful quotation and an astonishing historical grasp. A novelist could be jealous."

- Ian McEwan Novelist

"Cambridge University Press has done a great service to constitutional scholarship by republishing the elegant essays of a lawyer who has been at the cutting edge of civil liberty law for the past half century ... Sedley's life is both inspiration and testament to changing the legal light bulb to give off a brighter glow - as is this first book"

- Geoffrey Roberts New Statesman

"With an impeccable literary style and a nice turn of phrase... it is easy to see why [Sedley] is so greatly admired by his legal colleagues."

- Michael King Times Higher Education

"All in all, it is a remarkably informative book"

-Jerold Waltmen Baylor University The British Politics Group Quarterly #149

Editorial Reviews

"The best book I've read so far this year … You could have no interest in the law and read [this] book for pure intellectual delight, for the exquisite, finely balanced prose, the prickly humor, the knack of artful quotation and an astonishing historical grasp. A novelist could be jealous."
Ian McEwan, The New York Times

"Cambridge University Press has done a great service to constitutional scholarship by republishing the elegant essays of a lawyer who has been at the cutting edge of civil liberty law for the past half century … Sedley's life is both inspiration and testament to changing the legal light bulb to give off a brighter glow - as is this first book"
Geoffrey Roberts, New Statesman

"With an impeccable literary style and a nice turn of phrase … it is easy to see why [Sedley] is so greatly admired by his legal colleagues."
Michael King, Times Higher Education

"… a remarkably informative book."
Jerold Waltmen, The British Politics Group Quarterly

"… an educational and enlightening read … the thrust of this collection of essays is the studied observations of an exceptional mind, not only about the legal systems in the UK and elsewhere, but perhaps more importantly about the human condition. I will read it again."
Donald E. Shelton, Critical Criminology

From the Publisher