REVIEWS
| Published date | 01 November 1956 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2230.1956.tb00386.x |
| Date | 01 November 1956 |
REVIEWS
TEE
PEOOP
OF
GUILT.
A
Study
of
the English Criminal Trial.
By
GLANVILLE
WILLIAMS.
(The
Hamlyn
Lectures,
Seventh
Series.)
[London:
Stevens
&
Sons,
Ltd.
1956.
viii
and
294
pp.
178.
6d.
net.]
IT
might be said, with profound respect, that rather like
Lord
Justice Denning
on
the Supreme
Court
bench,
Dr.
Glanville Williams
is
something of an
anfant
tsrdble
among academic lawyers. In
a
profession which
is
by training and
instinct inclined to abhor innovation, neither of them
is
in the lenst reluctant,
if need be-and there often
is
crying need-to tackle controversial
issues
and
to rush in where even angels fear to tread. Both are keenly and -sensitively
alive to the fnct that the common law
is
a
living, growing organism which
must remain
in
close touch with the. needs and purposes of the society in
which it has its vital function, and if they are sometimes
a
Httle (and not
quite fairly) impatient with its traditional slow rRte of development, even
their critics must admit that they are often proved right in the long run.
For
last
year‘s Hamlyn Lectures, the seventh in this most valuable series,
Dr. Glanville Williams has chosen the subject of
The
Proof of
Qiuilt,
a
study
of the English criminal trial by way of comparison with the principal
Continental system.
It
is
not easy to imagine
a
topic more fitting
to
the
Hamlyn
Trust, designed as it is expressly “to the intent that the Common
People of the United Kingdom may realise the privileges which in law and
custom they enjoy
in
comparison with other European peoples and, reabing
and nppreclating such privileges, may recognise the responsibilitice and
obligations attaching to them.”
There is in fact today, as there was
at
the time of the French Revolution,
a
considerable consensus of opinion, not only in this country but also among
informed foreign observers, that for impnrtinlity and independence of the
judges, for speed (a point,
I
think, barely touched on by Dr. Glanville
Williams) and for fairness towards the accused, the British system of trial
is indeed
a
privilege to be most highly valued by cornparison wIth most
or even all modern European countries. In the face of the natural pride
which English lawyers feel in the ndministrntion of their criminal justice,
Dr.
Glanville William has the boldness to wbject to serious and searching
criticism many timehonoured features nna aspects of the law of proof.
Since he brings each question to the touch-stone
“
whether the particular
rule
concerned
is
the best conceivable”-a tall order indeed-the
recrult
is
(within the limits of
a
short course of lectures) the most challenging survey
of the English Law of cvidence to have appeared since Best.
Dr. GlanvUle Williams goes quickly into
medim
re#.
“If there
is
serious
criticism of the present system,” he says on p.
15,
“it is not
so
much because
it
leads to the conviction of the innocent as because it too rendily assists
the acquittnl of the guilty.” This is indeed one of the main themes running
through this book and its impact
is
felt in many, seemingly disparate, fields.
The lecturer quotes the dictum of Viscount Simon in
8tirland
[I9441
A.C.
at
p. 824 that
“a
miscarriage of justice may arise from the acquittnl of
the guilty no
less
than from the conviction of the innocent,” and raises,
though only
in
passing, the interesting point that rules giving
ezoesa‘oe
pro-
tection to the accused and
so
tending to lend
to
unjustified acquittals are
bound to look increasingly unsatisfactory when penology
is
viewed from the
remedial rather than the punitive angle.
704
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