Reviews
| Published date | 01 September 1965 |
| Date | 01 September 1965 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2230.1965.tb02916.x |
REVIEWS
FIRST
STEPS
IN
ADVOCACY.
By
LEO
PAGE.
New and revised edition
with
a
Foreword
by
SIR
GEOFFREY
LAWRENCE,
Q.C.
[London:
Faber
&
Faber Ltd.
1964 182
pp.
12s.
6d.
net.]
I
BELIEVE
this to be easily the best instructional book on advocacy that has
ever been written
or
is likely
to
be. In
124
small pages the author says just
about all that is worth saying on the subject. Much more, of course, could have
been said.
Mr.
Page,
if
he had chosen to do
so,
could have padded out his text,
as
many others have done, with verbatim extracts from well-known trials
or
long quotations from historic speeches. Such padding can be entertaining
so
long as there is not too much of it, but it is rarely instructive and
Mr.
Page
is not in need of such aids; he contrives to be thoroughly entertaining under
his own steam. The fact is that becoming an accomplished advocate is like
becoming an accomplished pianist; improvement comes only by practice
and
all
that one can do for the beginner is to provide him with certain
foundation material on which to build as his experience increases. This is
precisely what the author has done, as the title of his book proclaims.
His
First Steps comprise all that anyone can learn about the art of persuasion
merely by reading print. All subsequent steps will have to be taken by the
reader himself if he is ever going to make the grade.
Very wisely, since many of the beginner’s steps are likely to be false ones,
much of
Mr.
Page’s advice consists in telling him what to avoid. “One of the
earliest rules for an advocate
. . .
is
not to speak too fast
”;
“
Few mistakes in
an opening are more certain to bring their own punishment than exaggeration
of the merits of your own case”; “An advocate should never quarrel with
the bench
”;
“
Almost every cross-examination by beginners tends to be too
long”;
“It
is
seldom wise to offer
a
young theory to an old judge” are fair
samples of his admirable precepts. Another is his contempt for manuals of
instruction on the use of gesture, facial expression
or
breath control in public
speaking. “My own advice is that you should not give one moment’s thought
or
have one instant’s anxiety as to whether you are ‘controlling your breath’
by the muscles of your chest
or
by the muscles of your left leg.”
On the positive side, he tells you to use the simplest and most intelligible
language, to get on good terms with your audience
at
the earliest possible
moment, to make a note of the facts of the case which really matter and
to
memorise them
so
firmly that you do not need to refer
to
it, to stick to
your
good points and throw sway your bad ones, to make sure you have a red pencil
in court, and to remember that your audience, whether judge
or
jury, does not
know
as
much about the case as you do. These and almost all of his other
precepts are exemplary.
I
say
“
almost
”
because
I
am inclined to question his
views on the mentality of juries. He is, of course, right in saying that in
speaking to a jury
“
you cannot well be too simple but you can easily be too
involved.’’ He goes on to say, however, that though the average age in years
of an English jury is about forty they should be talked to as though they were
boys and
girls
of fourteen; and he adds on another page that “in rural areas
they are not infrequently made up largely of ill-educated persons.
.
.
.
Your
case may have few merits, but the jury may have less sense.”
It
is twenty-one
years since these words were first published and
I
think there was more
truth in them then than there is now. There were more rural areas and less
education
to
be found in England in
1943,
and my own experience
of
con-
temporary juries is that it
is
a
mistake to talk down to them.
610
SEPT.
1965
REVIEW
9
61
1
Whether this is
a
permissible criticism
or
not, the fact remains that although
the book is announced
as
a
new edition in Sir Geoffrey Lawrence’s Foreword,
it
is really
a
reprint with minimal alterations. The same word can always
be found in the same place on the same page
as
in the previous edition. (The
misprint in the thirteenth line on p.
44
is no exception.) According to the
publishers’ announcement on the dust jacket
“
it has been revised throughout,”
but they are wrong about this for
p.
126
has
not been revised
at
all. The
imaginary witness who bought
a
blue serge suit
off
the peg for
€4 15s.
in the
1943
edition has had to pay
222 15s.
for
it in
1964;
but the imaginary counsel
who is taking
a
note of his evidence has not noticed the devaluation of the
pound (lucky man!) and still records the old price. This
is
a
pity, because
it gives
a
rather baffling twist
to
the end of what is otherwise
a
very
instructive exercise for beginners.
But it is nice
to
find that the price of the book has not kept pace with the
price of blue serge suits. It only cost
6s.
in
1947,
it only costs
12s.
6d.
now and
it is worth
at
least twice the money. The blurb
to
the Fourth Impression
quoted
The
Listener
as
saying that
it
was
“a
masterpiece
of
its kind and
should
be
read by all practitioners in all courts.”
The
Listener
was right.
C.
P.
HARVEY.
L’ETAT
ET
LE
DROIT:
ESSAIS
DE
PHILOSOPHIE POLITIQUE.
By
GIORGIO
DEL
VECCHIO. [Paris
:
Dalloz. Collection
“
Philosophie
du
Droit
”
(9).
1964.
184
pp.
Price not stated.]
SOME
fifteen years ago the Italian publishing house
Stud&
launched an
admirable series
of
“
everyman
*’
books,
to
wliicli Professor Del Vecchio, the
doyen of Italian legal philosophers, contributed two volumes, in
1953
on
Lo
Stnto
and
in
1!)56
on
I1
diiitto
internazionule
e
il
problena
della pace
(French
translation,
I)alloz,
1964).
lhe former occupies in French translation the first
half
of
the voluiiie under review. It touches, briefly, simply and clearly, and
with a sensc
of
proportion and bdance which is not granted to all authors
as
learned
as
Del
Vecchio, on many points
:
the difference between
“
society
”
and
“state,”
the elements
of
the state, its origin and historical evolution, its
constitution and functions, its place in international society and its ultimate
purpose and idcal.
A
further reding list of eighty works in various languages
is
appended,
with indications (taken over from the Italian original) that some
of these are
av:iil;tble
in Italian translation; these indications may bc of some
bibliographical interest.. ‘I’here
is,
on
p.
51,
one questionable statement, that the
British Empire, in its transformation from
a
unitary state (with colonies and
Dominions) into the Comnionwealth, has been acquiring
a
“
federative
”
character; but to the Italian
or
French student this is doubtless
a
peripheral
point. There
is
a
more scrious error (typographical) on
p.
62,
where
it
appears
to be made
ti
reproach against the United Nations that “m&me s’il
a
donnC
son adhesion, un Etat n’est
pas
capable de deployer une activitC ICgislative
universellement valable
”;
the omission of
a
line of test has inverted the
sense of the Italian original, where the reproach is that
“
even if it has given
its adhesion,
a
state
is
not [thereby subjected to
a
superior authority which is]
c:lp“l)le of
.
.
.”
The remaining half of the volume is occupied by translations of four
of Del Vecchio’s c1;issic writings
of
thirty years ago, which have already
appeared in English translation
:
“Ethics, Law and the State”
(1934)-
Znternationnl Journnl
of
h’thics,
October
1935;
“
On the Statuality of Law
”
(1928)-JournaZ
of
Comparatizje Legislation and International Law,
February
1937;
“The
Crisis
of
the State”
(1933)-51
L.Q.R.
615 (1935);
“
Individual,
State
and Corporation”
(1934)--PoZiticaZ Science Quarterly,
December
1935.
In these Del Vecchio elaborated, with profundity of erudition and refinement
of argument, the application of his philosophy, the main lines of which are
.
To continue reading
Request your trial