Ashes and Sparks
Ashes and Sparks
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 This anthology contains classic articles, previously unpublished essays and lecture transcripts.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.
- Makes classic articles and essays available once more, with additional postscripts written during 2010
- Analyses and comments on developments of continuing interest and concern in the UK justice system
- Situates events and developments in a context both of history and of principle, thus contributing to a coherent modern philosophy of law and justice
Reviews & endorsements
"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
Product details
March 2011Paperback
9780521170901
443 pages
228 × 152 × 20 mm
0.7kg
Available
Related links
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.
