ADDRESS DELIVERED BY THE ATTORNEY‐GENERAL TO FRENCH JUDGES AND LAWYERS
| Published date | 01 January 1947 |
| Date | 01 January 1947 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2230.1947.tb00033.x |
THE
MODERN
LAW
REVIEW
Volume
10
January
1947
No.
1
ADDRESS DELIVERED BY THE
JUDGES AND LAWYERS
ATTORNEY-GENERAL TO FRENCH
IT
has been suggested that
I
should talk to you about the
administration
of
justice in England.
I
should not have found
that an easy task before any audience
;
I
am especially diffident
about undertaking
it
before
so
learned and distinguished a
body as this one.
For
I
am a mere practising lawyer, and
although at one time
I
did teach law in one of our English
Universities
I
was singularly ill qualified to do
so,
for
I
had no
background
of
academic learning before
I
became a practising
barrister-and
I
have had no time to acquire one since.
My
training has been from day to day and year to year in the
ordinary and humdrum practice of the Courts.
Yet in
a
way
I
suppose that that is one of the typical and
distinguishing features which marks the English lawyer, and
you will find that it has to some extent affected the whole
development of our law.
As
often as not the English lawyer
has had little or no academic training.
At
the University he
may never have studied law at all. And although lectures on
law are provided for students at the Inns
of
Court of which
they become members
if
they are going to be barristers
or
at
the Law Society
if
they are becoming solicitors, they are
of
an
essentially practical character-and
so
far as barrister students
are concerned no student is compelled to attend them. He
has,
it
is true, to get through his examinations, but that can be
done without any undue expenditure of intellectual effort, and
certainly without any great knowledge of the theory of law.
The English lawyer’s real education in the law is acquired
in the course of his actual experience in dealing with concrete
cases.
That fact explains two notable things about English law
and English lawyers-the absence of any real underlying
science of jurisprudence and the suspicion with which English
lawyers commonly regard the legal theorists. English law has
never really attempted to work out general principles,
to
establish new legal concepts giving new expression to the idea
VOL.
10
1
1
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